It Must Have Been the Mistletoe
by CaliAngel89
Summary: Alex and Piper are enjoying first post-prison Christmas together as their lives change in monumental ways and Alex searches her memories of Christmases past to forge her way in the world as a free woman with her wife, children, and their best friend forever, Nicky. Post S7, slightly OOC. Fluffy, domestic Vauseman in all its glory.
1. It Really Is (A Wonderful Life)

**A/N: Little Christmas Vauseman for you guys, read how you wish...if enough of you guys want more than there could be a sequel with their tiny little army of mini-Pipers. So let me know if you guys like this little story of Vauseman's unique brand of domesticity. And merry and happy to all!**

_It must have been the mistletoe_

_The lazy fire, the falling snow_

_The magic in the frosty air_

_That made me love you!_

**Chapter One: It Really Is (A Wonderful Life)**

_Oh, but this year is different for you and for me_

_Our own little miracle on our own little street_

_Never before have I loved 'Silent Night' so_

_But now that you're here by my side_

_Baby it is, baby it is_

_It really is a wonderful life_

Alex couldn't help but laugh as her wife walked through the Christmas tree farm, heading towards the cut-your-own field instead of the precut lot. She had been out of prison for almost six months after being released sixteen months early thanks to a new law that cut sentences for non-violent first-time drug offenders with no prior arrests and after the past nearly fourteen years she had learned to savor the small moments like these when Piper Chapman-Vause was being her unique combination of ridiculous and adorableness only she was capable of.

"Baaabbbeee, I wanna cut our tree and carry it to the car," Piper asserted as she threw a fit that would rival that of an overtired and overstimulated toddler at Disneyland who had just dropped her ice cream on Mickey Mouse's oversized yellow clown shoe.

"Power tools are not your forte and you can barely carry yourself to our car," Alex fired back as she watched from behind as Piper tugged the zipper of her parka and grumble in indignant frustration as her pouting turned to pure rage at an inanimate object, "Still trying to zip your coat, baby?"

"Yeah, it won't even zip a little anymore. I could at least get it part of the way last week."

"Maybe it's time to give up. Try again in six to eight weeks," she came up behind her wife and wrapped her hands around Piper's waist as best as she could with how low much her swollen baby belly had taken over her abdomen over the past few weeks, especially after its most recent growth spurt as she entered her third trimester and her body prepared for the final stretch before motherhood fully took hold of their lives. Piper now had every unmistakable sign of pregnancy from the glowing skin to the low, perfectly round belly to the strange choice of wintertime footwear due to swollen feet and ankles. She waddled a bit when she walked and got winded easily as the added weight put a strain on her pelvis, hips, and lungs, her heart working overtime to pump enough blood for both her and the tiny people she was forming and now sustaining in her womb. Alex knew Piper couldn't wait to reach the finish line of her current race, just like every other one she had ever entered into, but Alex wanted them to stay in as long as possible. She knew the only thing worse than losing one of her twins was seeing them suffer. Piper of course always responded with, "So, you want me to suffer so you don't have to watch your precious babies suffer? Who do you love more?" Alex knew it was crazy talk and that Piper was afraid, her relentless pursuit of perfection had lessened over the years but was too deeply embedded in her DNA to disappear entirely. Piper couldn't handle failure and letting people down in the same way Alex couldn't handle suffering and being left behind.

It didn't help that most of the time it seemed as if Alex loved and wanted their children more than Piper. With the way Piper acted half of the time, one would think her pregnancy was the result of some drunken hookup where nobody realized neither partner had a condom until they both were too far gone. He would promise to pull out before he climaxed and even though they were both old enough to know better she would agree. He would of course either forget or be rendered unable when the moment came and so she would have no choice but to let him finish as her walls tightened around his shaft tearing into her depths as he thrust wildly and his needs and desires overtook hers. Then, to make a bad situation even worse, a few weeks later she would find herself not just pregnant and unable to reach the man who had made her that way but carrying twins at thirty-six and, as a result, she had chosen to make the best of her one chance to be a mother.

But that wasn't their story, not even close. Almost a year after Piper moved to Ohio, she took a job providing after-hours childcare to a young single mom struggling to keep her daughter out of the foster care system with a series of misdemeanor shoplifting, underage drinking and drug possession charges. The young mother couldn't afford to pay her very much and some weeks she couldn't pay her at all but she looked at it as paying the amends she owed Diane for not being there for Alex when her mother died, for punishing the mother for the sins of the daughter. Alex thought of the visits where she told her proudly about all the things that the infant was starting to learn and how she loved smelling her head.

_"Would you ever want one of your own," Alex asked during a visit where the blonde had just finished gushing with pride as she told her about the newest thing that the little girl had figured out how to do. Piper's face was glowing and her smile was shining brightly and Alex could see every bit of that effervescent twenty-two-year-old she had fallen in love with all those years ago._

_"You know where I stand on that. It's one thing to give them back after a few hours and another thing to deal with crying babies, no sleep and blocked milk ducts at two am," Piper asserted as she pulled away from Alex, creating both physical and romantic distance between the couple as she crossed her arms and flung her back against the chair._

_"You can have children without dealing with babies and breastfeeding," Alex argued as she tried to get the blonde to take her hand back without any of the guards noticing they had ever been holding hands in the first place. She wanted to have a real discussion about this topic and this time would not allow her beloved to shoot her down and close herself off without truly weighing the pros and cons. Alex knew they made a good team and had so much love and wisdom to give a child. They probably wouldn't be perfect mothers, nor would they ever aspire to be, but they would be damn good at it and their kids would always feel wanted and accepted, unlike the way they had grown up feeling._

_"Yes, because the system is so eager to give queers babies at all, especially ones with drug-related felonies. I am not equipped to raise a special needs child. My heart goes out to those who can but I know I'm not one," Piper declared once she realized Alex was not in the mood to be shut down easily, she was going to have an old-school Roman lion fight until one woman was left standing or they managed to come to a mutually agreeable truce. Piper knew exactly what that truce was and how happy three little letters would make the love of her life. She knew that she would probably suck at it but Alex would be a great mom. Would she be good enough to make up for all the times Piper was bound to fail? She'd never know if she didn't try and she knew Alex wouldn't give up until she was firmly into menopause and she didn't want to have this fight for around another decade. So she relaxed her body and made it clear she was willing to at least hear the older woman out. But she also glared at her in a way that told the brunette she had one shot at this._

_"It can't possibly be all bad or the human race would have died out long ago. It's not like conception is a process tailor-made for female pleasure and empowerment," Alex tried the best argument for procreation that she could come up with on the fly. She wasn't sure if it would work but it at least made the blonde chuckle a bit and offer the brunette her hand, which after a quick scan of the room Alex took with a smile._

_"Do you want one? Honestly, do you really want to give up your freedom forever? Because having a kid, especially these days, isn't just an eighteen-year commitment. You are responsible for it as long as you both live," Piper asked with a mix of seriousness and deep love as the two gazed into each other's eyes, both women trying to come out the dominant one while also having a deep, genuine concern for the other._

_Alex took a deep breath and pushed her glasses onto her forehead, "Honestly, I've always wanted you to have my baby. Since the first time I used a strap on you and that only made the feeling more intense and enjoyable when we fucked in that way. I've always wondered how it would feel to connect on that level with you. And you are the only one I've ever had that feeling with, where I love you so much that I want to put a baby in you. Where I have that warped evolutionary drive to make you the chosen one to bear nature's most precious gift, my child. One I would willingly bestow legitimacy upon. After you, I did it but I could never capture that feeling with any other chick. If I had that ability would you let me?"_

_"Before or after six shots of tequila?"_

_"Preferably before."_

_"I don't know but I can say if you could it would be one of those bound to happen things. We tend to get swept up in the moment and say fuck it when sex is involved."_

_"If it did happen? I mean women have choices, even if it's their partner's baby and they chose to have condomless sex, even make love, knowing they weren't on birth control. Making a choice says nothing about the act involved in creating the little bloodsucking demon."_

_"It depends. You back in the day, no. I couldn't have brought a child into that insanity with a parent who loved heroin more than anything or anyone else. Who was so blinded by power, adrenalin, and money. The you I loved and believed in so much I picked up my life and moved somewhere I knew no one, now that version of you I would let impregnate me right here, right now and I would gladly carry your child. I'd probably turn into one of those women in the waning years of her fertility hoping to bless her man with a son on their one chance at this thing. But I'm probably too old now anyway so it's a moot point." _

_"You're barely thirty-four."_

Piper got herself checked and her ovarian reserve was waning but her OB was confident that the blonde would be able to conceive with assistance. Unfortunately, they couldn't afford assistance and being legally single insurance wouldn't pay, even with an infertility diagnosis, unless she did six cycles of IUI that the Reproductive Endocrinologist said were extremely unlikely to work.

When she first got the news, Piper had been tempted to capitalize on her bisexuality in the worst way and seduce a guy then manipulate him into having unprotected sex by thinking there was no way he could get her pregnant. When Alex found this out after Piper told her of her perfect plan, the older woman told her if she did that they would be over forever and she wouldn't take responsibility for the child if she managed to be successful in her endeavor. She reminded the blonde that was a form of fraud and sexual assault and that the man would have rights to the child, ones that would be next to impossible for her to sever and with her record, she risked him having an extremely likely opportunity of being granted full custody.

So they started on the journey of finding a man willing to sign away the rights to his sperm. And there were plenty who were willing, just very few who were willing to do it the way they wanted them to. So many potential willing donors didn't understand why a bisexual woman, even one in a committed relationship, wouldn't want to have sex with a man, especially once they found out how long it had been since the last time, she experienced nothing but warm skin against her own.

They were close to taking one of these guys up on his offer, if that's what it took to get them a baby, provided he sign away his rights before engaging in the act and as long as there was no kissing or foreplay, they could get themselves where they needed to be but not each other. Then Piper was talking to another lawyer at her firm about her trepidation about creating her child through having sex with a man she could never love. She wanted to make a baby with Alex, well in as much as she could anyway. She was scared they'd go back down the same rabbit hole that led them to Ohio. He told her that he jacked off almost every night anyway, his career came first right now and he valued women too much to participate in toxic masculinity or hookup culture but he was also a twenty-four-year-old male in possession of a healthy sex drive, he might as well give it away to someone who had a use for it. He was at least a decade from wanting children of his own and he didn't want or need anything from her. He would give her his seed whenever she requested no questions asked.

He was a good-looking, driven and intelligent man with gold-flecked hazel eyes and hair that was a shade more brown than blonde with a shy yet warm smile. He had fairly soft features and was pretty average-looking, with no feature on his rounded face truly prominent but he was intelligent, athletic and good-natured. He was around Alex's height but more muscular with broader shoulders. He wasn't overly masculine but he had the appearance of a man with the strong, young swimmers that could easily get a girl pregnant, even one with her rapidly waning fertility and lack of good eggs. He asked to have his best friend from law school go over the donor contract and then one of her friends, a queer female family lawyer served as witness and notary to the signing of the contract, after Alex gave the go ahead, of course.

As Piper told it, that night he took her to a fancy restaurant, telling her that he knew she wouldn't be having his baby per se but he wanted to do something for the woman who would soon carry his DNA. That he couldn't think of her going through the strains of childbearing if he didn't know he had ensured she was properly pampered when she made the choice to utilize his seed to impregnate herself. They talked for hours and at the end of the night, she asked if he would pay for acupuncture and the cost of chiropractor and he said he would. He offered to pay for her to get fertility medications but by then Alex and Piper had decided not to go that route. Instead, they decided that if it was meant to happen then it would and if it wasn't, it wouldn't.

The morning she got a strong positive on her ovulation test, she whispered to him in the breakroom over lukewarm coffee that it was time and they quickly figured out the logistics of their arrangement before anyone else could walk into the tiny grey and white room. That night, he came to her apartment with a pizza and a dirty magazine. The two had dinner and then he did his thing in her extra bedroom that she used mainly as an office/exercise room, he left the donation in the bathroom and knocked on her door before leaving the apartment. Piper took the sample and then started a video chat with Alex on a contraband cell phone, telling her she was ovulating. She had been tracking her ovulation for nearly a year by that point and had never had a cycle like this one. She felt more bloated than normal and her cervix felt softer than it had since she started tracking, she had a good feeling about this cycle. That she would be one of the lucky ones who only took one insemination to get pregnant.

_"Babe, I think this is it," her fiancé told her as she laid in her bed in a pink silk and chiffon negligee with fishnet knee-highs._

_"I hate that I'm in prison right now. You look too hot in that. It's almost criminal."_

_"But at least you have a contraband phone. You'd be surprised how many babies are conceived with one parent miles away. I've talked to military wives who conceived their man's child when he was in an undisclosed war zone, so it could be worse. You could always lose a little clothing yourself, we both know that shit isn't soft and comfy."_

_"Agree to play monkey-see-monkey-do and maybe a round of Vause says and I will. And I get to tell you when it's time to release the Kraken in your vag."_

_"I wouldn't have it any other way. I want you to get me pregnant and I want to do whatever it takes to get you there."_

Alex stripped down to just her bra and made sure Piper had a good view of her wet, arousal-swollen cunt while they played a few rounds of their sex game. She licked her lips when Piper thrust the dildo Alex had told her to buy deep inside her fertile center as she imagined herself fucking the blonde, who was wetter and a deeper shade of red between her legs than normal. Her lover's swollen center made her heart palpitate as she felt her arousal pooling. She relished every moan that emanated from her beloved's lips as she watched her walls tensed around the toy and her thumb rubbed hard at her clit. She could tell the blonde wanted it and she was trying to hold back until Alex said the word. Piper was desperate to feel Alex's release inside of her. Alex let Piper orgasm before she allowed herself to go over the edge. If she were going to impregnate the love of her life, she was going to make sure they both got to cum and that the blonde deserved to be the first to feel the ultimate sense of satisfaction known to humankind.

_"You ready for this? You still want it?"_

_"Please Alex, I don't want it, I need it. Make me the most special girl in the world. Let me have your baby. You'll be home soon and maybe we can't get married but the prison-industrial complex can't stop us from starting our family when we choose. Nothing can stop us, I was born to be your partner in life and bear your child. Nobody is gonna get in the way of that."_

_"Go ahead and do it then."_

_"Can you make it a little hotter?"_

Alex flipped over on her stomach and put her pussy on top of her pillow and started groaning and thrusting her hips erratically, thank God for her bunkie's Ambien and anti-psychotics, as she cried that she was cumming and told her how good her big, hard cock felt inside her warm, soft vagina as the younger woman's walls tightened around her and pulled her in deeper as she searched for the spot that would take them both to the heights of pleasure. Her body knowing what both of them needed as she overpowered the younger woman underneath her.

_"You're so tight, baby," she imagined Piper pulling her down and into a kiss as she opened her legs as wide as she could to make more room for her girth. Alex's forceful grunts matched by Piper's moans as her body tightened and stiffened while the brunette's expanded and tore through everything in the way of her need to spread her seed inside a woman. She imagined the moment it happened would be a messy, noisy expression of pure animalistic desire that would leave behind more than just pink scratches on Alex's back and tender spots on Piper's neck and chest where their kisses took on an overwhelming hunger. Piper would be crying harder as Alex gave her all she had until they were both spent._

_As she watched Piper reload a second syringe, she remembered this was the woman she loved with every fiber of her being. This time she imagined a gentler, less animalistic scene. This scene was all about two people who loved each other so completely and deeply that when they connected, they created a spark from the two tiniest cells in the human body when the two finally met. It was slow and intimate, full of I love yous and you're so beautifuls._

_"You're so wet, baby…You smell amazing."_

_"More," she would cry, a request she gladly obliged as she melted into the source of her lover's softness and warmth and appreciated every uniquely female part of the blonde's body. Her modest bosom, the wide curves of her hips, the tender, easy-to-miss nub that existed solely for her sexual pleasure and the deep cavern she was lucky enough to get to explore. She felt the deepest gratitude a human could that this woman wanted her, that she trusted and believed in her so much that she would accept her humble offering of deep pleasure and unbridled joy. "I feel so alive," she would mutter in between contented sighs and guttural moans as she exposed her delicately curved neck and soft, perfectly rounded breasts closer to her lover's mouth, searching for something to ground her to the physical plane as her body gave way to a metaphysical one. She would kiss down her neck tenderly while her hands cupped her breasts and their bodies ground in a similar rhythm and hearts beat in tandem until her hands tangled into her blonde ringlets and nails clawed at her back as they came together like this moment was all that mattered, that nothing else existed besides the two lovers peering deeply into each other's eyes until they couldn't keep them open as everything within them surged to the mystical source of their deepest, most basic needs overtaking their physical bodies._

The next morning, Alex got the news that she had gone from eligible to the first female recipient of a newly passed law designed to ameliorate some of the more egregious, prejudicial aspects of the failed war on drugs. The only problem was that when the powers that be created the protocol to enact the law, they never intended that a female offender would even be eligible, let alone a recipient. The original plan was that the men approved for the program were immediately sent to a lower level facility to await either retrial or resentencing but there were too many women offenders and not enough beds so, after much debate within the bureau of prisons, they settled on a third option, immediate release and sealing her conviction so it wouldn't show up on a background check in exchange for Alex agreeing to help them research female criminality. This also canceled any obligations related to her release, including restitution and supervised release normally required of drug traffickers. They also gave her back her passport, since technically she no longer had a trafficking conviction, all that would show was that she had been convicted of a non-violent, non-sexual felony, not what the felony was. She called Piper from her counselor's phone and the two screeched like a couple of teen girls at a boy-band concert.

Sixteen days later, the release paperwork was approved and twelve hours later, it was impossible to tell where one body began and the other started. They didn't settle for merely tasting each other, they teased every drop they had been saving for each other over the past nearly two years since they decided to work on their relationship and being faithful for once. As they savored each other's softness and warmth, they knew it had been worth the wait for this special moment of stars bursting open and souls intertwining into one, this moment where they picked up where things left off. They felt a pop as the gate slammed shut and they knew that taking two steps back was no longer an option for their intense love affair.

_"I think you just got me pregnant, Alex Vause. Cause after that I'm starting to feel pretty pregnant. It feels like the deepest reaches of my body are waking from an eternal slumber and life is stirring within me."_

_"That's impossible," Alex exclaimed._

_"I know, we're both women and you didn't even put on your cock. Tongues, legs, and fingers don't get girls pregnant and I think you and Nicky can thank your lucky stars for that evolutionary fact," Piper teased as she started kissing and rubbing against Alex in an attempt to get her revved up for another round._

_"No, because you can't get a pregnant woman pregnant," Alex retorted with her usual sarcasm._

_"I'm not pregnant! Sure, my period is late but I've never been regular, the doctors told my parents it was because I had such a low BMI and high activity level. I was an athlete and when I was a teenager my parents were kinda glad that it lessened the chances that their daughter would be the unfortunate bearer of the shame of teenage pregnancy."_

_"If only they knew. There were, in fact, worse ways their daughter could shame them."_

_"Like what," Piper teased as she shifted her legs, dragging her thigh along Alex's still wet and swollen slit as the woman began to tremble again and Piper smiled mischievously as her power bottom urges took over and she relished in arousing her top and turning her into a needy little whore._

_"Like seducing a lesbian drug dealer and topping her dom. For the record, the second one is the more shameful thing she's done," Alex teased in a husky tone that was pure sex._

_"I don't feel the least bit ashamed," the blonde retorted as her fingers found Alex's clit and she rubbed her breasts against Alex's mounds, she noticed their nipples touching seemed more intense and raw than normal, "My breasts feel so sore. It's probably just been too long and they aren't used to the things you do to them."_

_"Or they are preparing to serve their evolutionary purpose."_

_"I'm not pregnant, I'm not. I'm not supposed to be able to get pregnant on my own."_

_"Well, technically you didn't. Unless you secretly fucked him."_

_"No. I wouldn't. I never thought about getting his shit into me from the source once. I didn't want to make our baby that way. I'm not going to say I never saw his dick, just that seeing it was as arousing as seeing your good-looking older second cousin get out of the pool in soaked swim trunks from last summer when you're both at the height of puberty and realizing your desire for the opposite sex."_

_"I hear unintelligible gibberish."_

_"God, there is nothing straight about you."_

_"What do you mean, I enjoy mounting women and thrusting my throbbing cock balls deep in their soft pussies, that's pretty straight."_

_"If you're born a dude, which you weren't. So it's about as gender-fucked queer as you can be, especially when you do it wearing red lipstick and stick my head in your tits when you find the spot."_

_"What that's hot."_

_"I'm not disputing that."_

_"Now, stop disputing other things."_

_"Okay, maybe I might be a teensy bit pregnant. I don't want to test too early and get my hopes up."_

_"How about you just not test at all and deliver a baby on our toilet," Alex responded sarcastically as her patience for Piper's ridiculousness waned._

_"That's not such a bad idea. Doctors these days seem to have forgotten that women have been birthing babies since the dawn of time. I don't need somebody telling me how to position myself or push."_

_"You are gonna be the death of me."_

_"Just take a test. C'mon a girl like you is an expert at taking tests. Just don't put your pee stick in my rinsing cup," Alex teased as Piper shook her head and laughed, "I never shoulda told you that story."_

_"What, it's funny…well, now that I got the girl and the baby forming in her womb isn't going to be saddled with a dumb last name like Bloom. They'll always have a couple of minute long grace period to get to class on time unless the teacher is a sadist who reverses the order of names during roll call."_

_"You were always headed for a life of crime, weren't you?"_

_"When you're smart, bored and a poor latch-key kid there aren't many other options but find ways to get in trouble."_

The next morning, Piper took a pregnancy test and it was a strong positive, as were the next dozen and the tests she took every day while she waited for her body to reject the miracle that she didn't feel she deserved. Before she knew it, she had missed two periods and was still throwing up wearing little more than a bra that was tight even on its loosest closure morning, noon and night as she threw up past the point of her stomach emptying. She finally faced that she was going to make herself and Alex mothers. She excitedly anticipated her first ultrasound until the tech ran from the room and grabbed a doctor. At the time there were two embryos with heartbeats, each with their own sac and placenta and what appeared to be an empty sac.

Two weeks later, all that was in her womb were two fetuses with strong heartbeats, the third sac had dissolved into her uterine lining.

Thankfully, both remaining babies were above average size and developing normally. The doctors told her they were free of any markers for common genetic diseases, including Down's Syndrome, which was a real worry given Piper's age and the quality of her eggs. Their brains, hearts and other internal organs seemed to be developing as they should. The doctor said he could definitively say what Baby A's sex was but they had agreed they didn't want to know. As summer turned to fall, Piper's belly swelled and Alex often caught her smiling radiantly at her body, blossoming with new life and the ripeness of maternity. They got married in Niagara Falls when Piper was nearly eighteen weeks pregnant and told her parents and Cal, neither of whom initially supported either major development in Piper's life. But at this point, they were beginning to come around to the idea, everyone except for Neri that was. She was concerned about letting her daughter be around a lesbian who admittedly trafficked young women, even if she was there to supervise.

All was good until November hit. Before then, they had been reveling in the joy of togetherness and having their every dream come true in the most fabulous way possible but now Piper was a moody, horny monster who felt huge and the constant pain while still suffering from morning sickness in her third trimester. Nothing Alex did or said was right and the bombs she lobbed at the brunette cut deep, especially when the night before she angrily declared, "you could never know how this feels, you'll never be a real mother! So stop trying to tell me how I should feel or how amazing the things my body is doing are!" Doors were slammed and tears were shed and shed some more when Piper realized what she had said without thinking. Alex had chosen to sleep on their couch, binge-watching mindless saccharine Christmas romances Piper had saved on her watchlist to distract the pounding in her head. She woke after a couple of hours of fitful sleep to the sun coming up and knew even though Piper was the one in the wrong she had to do something to make her beloved feel better.

She brainstormed ideas while she heated water for tea, watching the kettle closely to make sure it wouldn't whistle and echo through their tiny century and a half-year-old house's poorly insulated walls and awaken the demon that had taken over her sweet, angelic bride, well the demons to be exact. She recalled the one Christmas they spent together before prison, the had known each other over two Christmases and were a few months away from their third when Paris happened. It felt like a million lifetimes ago. _Vampires have shorter lifetimes than us_, Alex muttered out loud while her fingers blindly searched through boxes of tea until she found a yellow box and pulled out a bag then grabbed a grey box and a bag from that as well. She shut off the kettle then grabbed a pair of silly Christmas tree mugs Piper had seen at a craft fair a few weeks earlier and just had to have. As Alex set a timer and watched the water in the cups turn an amber color, she had an ah-hah moment, she knew how to get Piper back.

Alex could only think of one time in their life together during her drug days that she gave Piper a firm, unwavering no and that was when the blonde spent a month begging for a Christmas tree every time that she saw one. It was one of the first times their separate worlds crashed. During her girlhood, Alex knew better than to ask for silly things like Christmas trees and waiting in line at the mall all morning to see Santa. Christmas trees and their adornments were undeniably wasteful and the cost exorbitant but for those who had nothing to put underneath them, those facts were amplified. Santa didn't come to ghetto apartments or trailer parks. Well, at least that's what the mothers and older children she was raised around cautioned her when she started school and learned that other kids wrote letters to this guy in a red suit and spent hours flipping through brightly colored department store catalogs, circling random items with a pen or marker while they sat on the couch that didn't double as their mother's bed and had never languished in a consignment shop.

Then she got a little older and heard about other poor kids who got free toys and donated fashionable coats and sneakers. But when she told her mom about this Diane in her thick New England accent asked her, _"What's wrong? My best isn't good enough for you? The stocking I've filled with items I lovingly collected and went without to get for you not good enough. Nothing I evah do is good enough for you," she paused as if she was preparing to really lay into her daughter but then something about her demeanor as she peered at the barely prepubescent child who seemed so full of fear and confusion lately shifted, "Tell ya what, Ally, if you drop this and show a little gratitude ya might find some makeup in your stocking. I think you're finally old enough, just don' think it means you can go chasin' boys." "You have nothing to worry about, mom. I'm not into boys and I don't think puberty and makeup are going to change that." And in typical Diane fashion, instead of doubting her nine-year-old daughter she told her without missing a beat, "Okay if that's how it is then don't go chasing girls either. No datin' until you're thirteen, baby. And don't you start abusing sleepovers niethah or you'll be the one sleepin' on the couch." _

Alex smiled at that memory, there were so many things Alex wished her mom had lived to see when it came to the new world order where parents encouraged their children's sexual and gender variance from whatever age it chose to make its appearance. She threw out the tea bags and tiptoed cautiously to the bedroom, avoiding the creaky floorboards under her feet and sloshing hot liquid threatening to scald her skin with every step. She set the mugs down and rubbed Piper's back until she stirred.

"You're still here. I thought you left. I'd deserve it if you did. What I said last night was unforgivable," Piper groaned sleepily as she rubbed her eyes and rolled over to face her wife.

"I've said hurtful things about your sexuality too. Like when I got pissed off more than once and called you a straight girl when I knew you were barely bisexual," Alex told her in a soothing, apologetic tone.

"There's no such thing as barely bisexual," Piper asserted.

"You know what I mean. You are like a Kinsey five. You enjoy sex with men and getting attention from moderately hot boys but you only fantasize about having sex with women and look at what you're married to," Alex responded with a cocky, playfully sexy grin.

"We're still married," Piper asked with all the emotions and facial expressions of a toddler who had just finished being punished for an especially glaring example of misbehavior asking her caregiver, "you 'till wuv mwe wight," as she tried to get her pregnancy pillow back into a comfortable position.

Alex reached out her hand to help then pressed a hand into her bump, feeling Thing 2's butt or was it a head, she couldn't tell the difference when the babies were sleeping, no it was a butt she realized as she felt the colt-like kicks and wiggling, "Of course we are. You're allowed to be crazy and irrational even for you right now. You aren't just pregnant after thinking you were virtually infertile but you are having twins and it happened on the first cycle you tried, it's not like you had a couple of cycles for your TTCing to sink in. God, I can't believe I said that word. And out of the four women you should have by your side, I'm the only one standing by you. Sure, you could make pregnant friends but they all have sisters, mothers and college best friends by their side and you don't. You have me, a woman who's never been pregnant but would take over without hesitation if it were humanly possible. I can't bear to watch you suffer and then there's the added amazement that there are these tiny humans with kicking feet and beating hearts. I can rub your bump all I want and replay their heartbeats on an unending loop but it'll never be the same as experiencing it from the inside, being the first to feel those stirrings. And now it's too late for me, even if I wanted it, which I'm not saying I do so it twists the knife that much more. I'm a fucking failure as a human being and as a woman can't do a damn thing right, the way I'm supposed to. My mind is a special kind of fucked up, It's not rare, no, it's screwy."

"Technically, the only problem is your eggs are a bit too old. You still get your period like clockwork."

"Nobody's gonna give an ex-drug dealing dyke with one foot in the grave an egg."

"I might know somebody who seems to have healthier ovaries than the doctors thought she did and no desire to ever do this again. Our financial situation is better now."

"Get these two out and weaned and we'll talk. Does that mean you've changed your mind about," Alex asked gleefully as her voice trailed off slowly.

"Yeah, just be careful. You know the terms of your release," Piper cautioned with a steely glare that made her wife cower before she regained her confident, fearless demeanor.

"I'm the best there ever was and you know it. I just got greedy and depression took over and as I do, I shot myself in the ass," Alex declared confidently.

"I do. Have you been up for a while?"

"Never really got to sleep. Things 1 and 2 let you sleep?"

"My ribs were in Thing 2's way again and it was trying to spread out and take up all the space in my womb. I swear that baby is a boy the way it takes up space in the world. Thing 1 was up to her usual tossing and turning. She did a little dancing at two am so I put some music on my phone and held the speaker to my belly. I got up to pee twice an hour but nothing out of the ordinary."

"You up for a date, Pipes?"

"What do you have in mind, Al?"

"I was thinking about that Christmas we were together and how badly you wanted a tree but I had never and was determined to never have one. I don't think I'll ever understand the most curious of American middle and upper-class Christmas traditions but it means something to you. I want to start a new tradition; I want to watch our kids go running to a Christmas tree overflowing with presents wrapped in shiny red papers with cartoony Santas and Reindeer. To have you proclaim, 'I thought we agreed we wouldn't' in my ear through gritted teeth as their eyes instantly lock in on the most extravagant and impossible to wrap of their presents when you agreed you wouldn't but I did nothing of the sort. But you have to teach me how to string the lights and can we keep the décor somewhere between garish mess of random colors and white and gold Architectural Digest spread?"

"Of course," Piper replied as she tried her best to close the gap between their lips with her protruding belly in between them. Their kissing turned into making out as tears fell from their eyes. Somehow, they managed to stop at the border of steamy and not proceed. And now, just over two hours later here they were, headed down the path to a local tree farm's pre-cut tree lot.

"Al, they're sleeping and if you want this lovely date to last very long they had better stay that way," Piper hollered as she pushed Alex's hands away, "And furthermore, I have no intention of allowing anything to change," Piper asserted in response to Alex's earlier comment about giving in and accepting her limitations as a woman in the third trimester of a pregnancy with twins, "I'm not about to spend a day laid up in bed if I don't have to. I already did a year in prison for carrying drug money for you and am not about to do another one for carrying your babies!"

"The doctor told you that your pregnancy is high risk and you need to be cautious if you want to take home two healthy babies."

"At no point in this whole endeavor did I want to take home two healthy babies, I wanted to have _a _baby, not a litter," she declared, somehow forgetting already about telling Alex she couldn't imagine one of their babies without the other (she was Piper after all and thus capable of levels of ridiculousness most would never reach even without the pains, hormones and assorted annoyances of pregnancy), "I refused the Clomid and IVF because I only wanted one. I chose to do it at home with a known donor because I didn't like the pressure the fertility clinics gave me because of my age! I'm not infertile, just in love with your stupid ass for some dumb reason! Then, as if I wasn't already crazy in love, I decided you know what I should do for my ex-drug dealing pimp wife who used her time in prison to seduce a fucking guard and get herself sent five hundred plus miles away who just got an early release, I should get myself pregnant! I already picked up my life and moved halfway across the country but that wasn't enough for me. I should give her a child even though we both know there's a good reason God ensured that we couldn't procreate, that you were blessed with ingenuity instead of a fully functioning dick and I was blessed with an adventurous spirit instead of fully functioning ovaries!"

"Twins is hardly a litter. And you could have reduced to one if you really didn't want two. You chose to carry twins, nobody else did. Don't look for sympathy when you made an adult decision to do something. The doctors told you that you were at a higher risk of either releasing multiple eggs or none on any given cycle, that your ovulation was erratic."

"What, was I supposed to let them stick a needle into one of my baby's hearts? I'm pro-choice but I'm also not God. I couldn't," Piper paused as she saw Alex go into her dark place, imagining herself suffocating the life out of a man because she felt he deserved it and most people would agree if they knew the things he'd done to her. Piper knew this was a place it nearly impossible to get her wife back from, "I didn't mean…that's actually part of why I couldn't. I know what we went through when you took a life and I couldn't, our body count is as high as I ever want it to be. Maybe if I hadn't planned this pregnancy or couldn't afford it or my health was at risk it might have been different. And I'm not going to say I didn't consider it and I'm still not one of those women who calls herself doubly blessed and I may never be. It's like when you order something online but they mess it up and send you two and bill you for one so you figure you might as well keep the free thing because you like the item you actually intended to buy. It doesn't mean that over the past seven and a half months I haven't grown to love both of our children, just that it's not something I would have done on purpose but at the same time I wouldn't change it if I could, I'm probably not making any sense."

"Did you really compare our twins to a factory error," Alex asked angrily as she began to rub her wife's protruding belly as her eyes swelled with love and pride, which instead of making the blonde swoon like they were in some Christmastime Hallmark movie only made her angrier.

"You don't have everything a pregnant woman has to deal with times two," Piper declared as she exploited a rare moment of vulnerability and attempted to overpower her wife.

"Hey, you only have to go through labor once, if at all," Alex added in a last-ditch effort to win an argument they both knew she had no chance of winning.

"But I wanted to be a real mother! I wanted to do at least one thing in my life the way nature intended," Piper asserted before the damn broke and she became a heaving mess of hormonal tears. Even if she eventually discovered her eternal youthfulness was due to vampirism rather than her mother's good genes and thus lived forever and infected Piper, she would never be able to watch her love feel pain. Watching Silvia be hurt or scared had been hard enough but Piper feeling those same emotions was a whole other ballgame.

"Come here, baby. I love you so much, Pipes. And I do get it. Even though I do feel more blessed than I deserve to be. I get to be married to you and claim your children as my own, to call them our children. You carrying our children with an actual diamond on your finger makes this the best Christmas I've ever had in my over four decades of life," she pulled the blonde into her arms and held her tight as she held onto the brunette's black down puffy coat and rested her head on the woman's white scarf that she had knitted, a new hobby Piper discovered when a bisexual girl she met in school invited her to her sewing circle. Piper heard free wine and snacks and she couldn't refuse, she had intended to get drunk on wine and instead found a hobby that relaxed her and came in handy to keep her wife warm in that cold, grey prison. Everyone was jealous whenever Alex would receive a pair of heavy knitted socks, she could have made a killing selling them for favors but instead, she told Piper how to create a business selling them online and at street fairs. The two now owned PALS, a company that provided handmade knit products and for each sale donated a similar knit item to either a woman in prison, formerly incarcerated woman or a child in foster care due to the prison system's hold on decaying poor and minority communities.

They operated a business training program for recently released female inmates and LGBT+ youth transitioning out of foster care, in exchange for making their best-selling products, socks, and hats, they learned how to become entrepreneurs and got a glaring job reference after six weeks. They had even hired a few employees through their training program, including a sweet gay boy with dreams of fashion school and religious parents who was now in charge of product development, coming up with new designs for the couple. Piper dug her nose into the scarf, inhaling the scent of organic yarn and the exotic scent that was uniquely Alex as she sobbed.

"If having a grunting, sweaty, stinky dude blow his load deep in your tight, barely wet cunt with only one orgasm on his mind and nine months later you're the one sweating and straining as you push a watermelon out the eye of a needle is the only way to become a mother than I'm fucked," Alex teased in an attempt to stop Piper's tears before they stopped her heart, permanently. She could feel Piper's laugh and her eyelashes flutter even through three layers of clothing, "Do I amuse you, Pipes," she looked down at the head nestled on her breast, soothed by her heartbeat.

"So you're saying you are fucked because you didn't get fucked, Ms. Gold Star lesbian?"

"I'm not a gold star and you are one of the few people who knows that."

"Sorry, somewhat tarnished gold star, since you count handjobs and blowing guys for liquor and smokes in high school as having sex with men. I say if nobody gets naked it isn't sex."

"Mutual masturbation?"

"Only counts if it's for your amusement. God, I wish I could masturbate. I miss sex."

"Well the doctor said you could resume normal sexual activities after thirty-two weeks."

"That doesn't help when I'm thirty weeks and four days," Piper responded with a tinge of annoyance as her hand began to massage Alex's right breast and Alex's hand that had been massaging her bump pushed its way underneath her full belly panel, shoving it down as her need began to consume everything trying to separate her from pure fulfillment. The older woman felt a surge of arousal as she looked around to make sure nobody was walking around who could catch them in the act.

"The doctor said they responded well to the first round of steroids. I thought you were a big proponent of early release for non-violent offenders," Alex teased flirtatiously.

"Yes, except in this scenario I'm in charge of the parole board and I say these little bastards are far from non-violent offenders," Piper asserted as she tried to harness what little bit of the goodie-two-shoes she had once been in what felt like two lifetimes ago now.

"First they aren't bastards," Alex declared as every bit of maternal protective instinct exploded onto her wife before being interrupted, "Uh, yeah they are. We were neither married married nor prison married when these children were conceived so technically, they are! And I'm not married to my baby daddy and I have no desire to be!"

"Well, they're being born into a marriage and I would have married you before they were in your belly if I could but the prison system doesn't think prisoners should marry at all and haven't heard the news that gay marriage is a federal right! Unfortunately, to them it's a federal right like gun ownership, only for those that old white men deem worthy and drug dealing felon lesbians will never be worthy to them. Besides, who knew all it would take would be one shot of man jizz while I watched over a contraband cell phone to get the job done? We had no way of knowing if there would be no eggs, one, two or more. They told us it would take at least six cycles but more likely a year or more if you insisted on AI, if we conceived at all through any form."

"Oh, don't suggest that there could be more. I have a recurring nightmare about that very thing already."

"I can see it now, me next to you in the OR while you're lying on the table with those thin blue sheets and the doctor cutting you open and pulling babies out of you like your uterus is a clown-car," Alex teased with her trademark sarcasm as her fingers found Piper's clit.

Piper dug her nails into Alex's wrist that was attached to the hand that was currently acting like it owned her pussy and could do what it wanted because they both knew it could. When it came to Alex, Piper was always game for sex and pregnancy with twins had only made her more ravenous but just like when steel bars, double-paned glass, and concrete barriers separated them, there was something keeping her from satiating her deep hunger and that only made her more angsty and frustrated. Neither one of the women had thought there could be higher stakes for illicit lesbian sexual activity than solitary confinement but now that it meant their children's health and quite possibly their lives, they had quickly realized it had been so easy to break that rule because the stakes back then had been ridiculously low in comparison, "I'm being serious Alex! What if they missed one? Or two? Or three? I read stories."

"From like twenty years ago when ultrasound technology wasn't what it is now. If there's one hiding in there then I'm training them up for the original family business 'cause they are better than I could ever be at evading detection and you know I was good."

"Yeah, not good enough evidently. If you were good, I wouldn't have done a year in federal prison and spent another one and a half visiting your ass instead of studying for exams."

"I have an exam I'd like to give you."

"Smooth, Vause. Remind me again why the women cream themselves and plead to get underneath you?"

"You should know better than anybody else."

"We both know who creams their shorts to get to whom in this relationship," Piper teased with a sort of youthful seduction and powerful declaration of sexuality that once had ended her up on a beach in Bali twenty-four hours later.

"Not so loud. I like my reputation."

"But it's all a lie. Don't you wanna be your true self?"

"My true self would get me beat playing dodge ball against a box of teddy bears from a nursery school, so no. And it's not like you were always so true to yourself, little miss."

"It's Missus…Vause…Missus…Vause," Piper asserted strongly with her pink lips precariously close to Alex's red ones, "Let's go get that tree so we can go home, just these babies are not leaving my uterus until next year and if they do I will ensure that you never have sex again!"

"Oh, really? How do you propose to do that?"

"Go all full-on mafia don on those pretty little fingers of yours and just when you think I'm done I'll cut off just enough of the tip of your tongue that you can't get it out of your mouth."

"Wow, Pipes, that's dark."

"Well, I do have a tendency to go all gangsta with an a."

"Yes, that worked so well the first time, babe. You know, when you didn't have six pounds of fetus in your womb plus the weight of two placentas and two bags of water to contend with."

"Not to mention all the weight I've gained just because. That's one Christmas gift I wish I had a gift receipt for."

"I know what gift from pregnancy to your already perfect body I wouldn't return," Alex responded as she peered lecherously at the now prominent full mounds on her chest.

"They're fun to look at, I'll admit. I like the appearance having a full bosom for once in my life," Piper responded as she noticed where Alex's green orbs were glued, "But not so fun to have. They're so sore and I know myself and that rubbing cream into them will end up violating my doctor's no orgasming restriction. And I want to keep these babies in as long as possible. I'm not ready to have two human beings completely dependent on me for their every need."

"Believe me, I'm in no hurry to watch you go through the most extreme pain the human body can experience. And I know what you're gonna say but they'll be completely dependent on us, not just you. And I'm no more ready for that than you. I am curious to find out what's between their legs though."

"You know that has no actual meaning. It doesn't determine anything about who they'll be or how they'll identify or present themselves. Look at us, I mean c'mon, babe. You don't leave the house without eyeliner and red lipstick and I've seen you use red high heels as a weapon, you are androgyny at its finest and the only typically feminine things I've ever done are bearing children and nearly marrying a man who I enjoyed sleeping with. And we bring out each other's androgyny so well no matter what we do it always ends up looking like a championship wrestling match."

"I love when the Smith grad comes out."

"Wouldn't say that too loudly, because you know what she likes to do."

"And I still say you got a belly full of boys because you would do something like that to me. You always do love finding every way possible to give me more trouble than I know what to do with."

"But every time you rise to the occasion. I feel like there's a lot of testosterone in my body and the babies both behave like undisciplined little men. Although, I'm hoping for one of each."

"Of course you are," Alex responded sarcastically as her eyes glared into Piper's commandingly.

"I get enough biphobia from lesbians I'm not married to, could I please not get it from the one I actually give a damn about," Piper uttered forcefully as she started down the path to the pre-cut tree lot.

"You are gonna be the death of me, Piper Vause-Chapman," Alex responded softly as she wrapped a protective hand around her wife's protruding navel area as they walked through the muck and snow, the older woman scanning for ice patches the way she had once scanned for cops and their dogs in another life, "Walk slower, baby. There's still ice from the storm last night. I don't want you to slip."

"God, how many times have you kept me from tripping on the ice?"

"A million and next Christmas I'll have two more little demons with a death wish to keep track of, just nobody wants a medical emergency in rural upstate New York. I don't even want to think how far away we are from the nearest NICU that can handle twins nine weeks early."

"But I love it up here. The nearest neighbors are a quarter mile away and I can watch the sunrise over the mountains every morning while I drink my tea."

"Life is simple and nobody cares who or what I used to be. I'm just the CFO of that sock company my wife created. Sometimes though I'd like to start over somewhere equally simple but with no prior history for either of us. I lived a life of adrenalin and I paid the price. Some would say I didn't pay enough but when the men at the same level in the ring as I was do a day in prison then maybe I'll buy their argument. A white lesbian is still lower on the totem pole of American society than some Middle Eastern man."

"Cause you can't pay bribes. The only thing of value you have to them is your lover's name."

"I'm so thankful for the day you realized that. I don't think anyone could be more grateful."

"Oh, really, Vause? Cause I can think of two people and one of them just rolled over. I think we know which one is gonna always be asking to help mommies. The other one is just chillin' but Thing 1 wants to know what mommies are doing. As long as Thing 1 stays head down, I don't care what else they do."

"You really have your mind made up about this whole vaginal labor thing if it were me I woulda asked for the soonest date they'd be willing to cut the kid out. You refuse to even talk about an induction date and I feel for the poor nurse who even suggests the c-word."

I'm fine with the c-word. Cunt, cunt, cunt, cuntie-cunt-cunt."

"Not that c-word, you ridiculous human. God, I love you. You are so perfect," Alex teased as they both fell into each other's arms in a fit of laughter before the brunette regained her composure and returned to the task at hand, "So how do you like your tree?"

"I always go for the tall ones that need a little extra love. The ones that it takes a special person to help realize their full potential for good."

"Did Larry know you were looking for the Alex Vause of Christmas trees?"

"Larry was Jewish so it was easy to get him to believe anything I said when it came to Christmas."

"And I'm the one who's supposed to be manipulative and generally bad to the bone."

"Well, we are soulmates. We're cut from the same cloth."

"Except for one tiny detail."

"Again with the biphobia, Vause," Piper huffed.

"Don't ASS-UUU-_me_. I was gonna go with I have street smarts you will never possess. We fit perfectly in that area. I like the feeling of thrusting my cock in women and you like the feeling of p-in-v action."

"After that inappropriate remark, you may never have that opportunity again!"

"You know you can't resist the allure of a cock going balls deep in your pussy," Alex whispered as the couple walked inside a wood and chain link fence, "especially if said cock is mine. Cause I know how to find all the right spots in perfect order. I three starred all the levels and got a platinum trophy on my finger for my accomplishment."

"Alex! There are children around!"

"And there weren't when I was coming onto you at the fork in the road?"

"That's different, they're our children. If we didn't, they wouldn't."

"That's not how it works, you goofball," Alex choked out through deep laughter before continuing, "Or we'd have a preteen complaining about how we're pulling him away from his Fortnite. I don't know what they see in that," Alex exclaimed.

"Yes, I know, you're into the classics like GTA," Piper replied with a cocky tone.

"Hey, my therapist said it would be good for my PTSD and it has been. I've gotten into some monster games too and I know you play that silly soccer game with the cars," Alex argued with a sly smile that nearly pulled their lips together.

"Guilty as charged. I can see our family game nights now," Piper said wistfully as she patted her bump.

"We should get a second controller when we stop for ornaments," Alex responded as she found their second twin's feet lodged in her wife's ribs, "Hey little one, wake up for Momma. Come have some family time. You had better not be in there playing Fortnite and ignoring family time already," she cooed as she tried to tickle the baby's foot.

"Let the kid sleep," Piper answered with rolled eyes and gritted teeth as Hulk Piper threatened to make an appearance and sink into Alex's neck in a way neither of them would find particularly pleasurable

"But this one isn't very active. I worry about them," Alex added as she kept stroking her wife's belly in an attempt to wake up Thing 2. Piper went to push her wife's hand away but Alex's smile and emerald eyes were smiling brightly and she just couldn't, "They're fine. Nothing is going to go wrong this time," Piper barely replied before gasping and nearly doubling over.

Alex's hand flew out on instinct, "Are you okay, baby," she asked frantically.

"Yeah, just they both chose the same moment to flip. And if you can imagine one baby doing that, try to think of it doubled. It's painful and now Thing 2 is lying crossways and acting all frustrated about the large unknown to them mass getting in the way of their comfort because it seemed like a good idea."

"Our kids would have sibling rivalry and spar in utero. You want a fir or a pine," Alex asked as she looked at a direction sign on a red and white striped pole.

"Which do you want?"

"We always had firs growing up but it's your first tree so you pick this year and I'll pick next year. And go like that until the kids take over. And then Christmas is all about them for the next few years, I'm sure we'll be trading off reminders that they are only young for a little while and we'll miss those moments one day," Piper replied as Alex smiled at her wife and tightened her grip on the blonde's hand as the brunette stood at the candy cane-like signpost and the two groups of trees just beyond it, trying to decide which set looked better to her, which one would hold the tree of her dreams.

"I love the smell of pine and generally doing anything possible to horrify Carol Chapman so, let's go to the left and explore a brave new world together," Alex replied after an unusually long period of debate for her.

"Me too, to everything you just said," Piper replied as she kissed Alex, slipping the woman just the slightest hint of tongue. The two spend almost two hours wandering rows of pine trees while holding hands and gazing at each other with softness and the sort of romance that only comes out at Christmas-time when two lovers are caught in the magic of the season. They were still Piper and Alex so there were some meaningless debates over needles and branches that became unnecessarily heated before they found the tree that might as well have been floating in a golden orb and they knew this tree was meant to be theirs. They quickly found a high school boy to help Alex carry it and tie it to the car while Piper attempted to delegate their actions like she knew what to do. Once Alex got into the car after one last check of the tree, she smiled at her wife rubbing her belly with a slight grimace.

"You okay, baby?"

"Yeah, they are just being really active right now."

"They're probably hungry. You have enough energy for lunch and Target?"

"Yeah. Maybe some food will put them back to sleep. And I'm not ready for our date to end."

"You say that like our perfect date ends at your porch. You do remember the part where we're married with our own house."

"But it's not ours."

"We can buy a house wherever we want in six months when I get signed off from probation, I've been going to meetings and group therapy to cut down my time and my PO said if I keep it up he'll sign me off when I'm eligible for an early change in status. We'll be able to live anywhere we want."

"How about either the Central Coast of California or the coastal Pacific Northwest, somewhere you get both sand and snow."

"Your mind is so bisexual, honey."

"Alex!"

"No, I think it's a great idea."

"It's settled then. Can we get pizza?"

"We can get whatever our babies are leading you to believe they want."

"Maybe we should go to an Italian place just in case they change their minds."

"Yeah, just to be safe," Alex answered as she carefully pulled out of the dirt parking lot and headed towards the couple's favorite little Italian bistro.


	2. Underneath the Tree

**Chapter Two: Underneath the Tree**

_I'm gonna hold you close_

_Make sure that you know_

_I was lost before you_

_Christmas was cold and grey_

_Another holiday alone to celebrate_

_But then one day everything changed_

_You're all I need_

_Underneath the tree_

After sharing a pizza and chicken parmesan, the couple headed to Target and after much squabbling went for a red and silver theme with clear lights and a glittery white see-through ribbon garland. They picked out a beautiful cream-colored knit tree skirt with red and white flannel checked accents, matching reindeer and a pair of embroidered green and black pine trees. They also selected a few ornaments just for fun or for future heirlooms, one for their marriage and one with a blonde angel holding a blonde baby in her arms and the year to remember the Christmas their children wavered between the heavens and earth. Alex fell in love with a huge inflatable Snoopy dressed as Santa with his elf Woodstock and Piper knew this was a rare moment for her wife, so she, of course, threw it in the cart and resolved to tell anyone who asked that it was her idea. They also bought icicle lights to hang on their gutter and other assorted holiday décor to make their home look more festive. If the Vause-Chapmans were going to do Christmas then they were going to do it to the nth degree and make their home look like Christmas exploded in their house. Then they went to the baby aisle and shopped baby sales. They tried to keep things gender-neutral but then Alex fell in love with a black and red Christmas dress.

"Baby, I thought we agreed we both thought these babies were both boys."

"I know but this dress is so adorable and they have it in 12-month size. It screams Alex Vause's daughter. C'mon, it's on sale. And one of them still might be a girl. I'm pretty sure there's a boy in there but the other one is a wildcard. And if we have two boys, we can save it or donate it, depending on where our lives are next Christmas."

"Are you really thinking about what we were talking about this morning? Like seriously considering it," Piper asked as they paused in front of the display of tiny red, white, green and black holiday dresses.

"Yeah, I am. Three feels more complete to me for some reason. If we can have a third than I want to," Alex responded with more assurance than she actually felt. The thought somehow both scared and intrigued her all at once.

"We'll have to use a bank," Piper stated like she wasn't sure that fact would be a deal-breaker for her wife.

"It's not a problem for me, is it for you?"

"No."

"Now can I please get the dress," Alex asked in a rare pleading tone.

"Yes. But buy a smaller size just in case. You know, to be careful and we can always donate one, as you said. And I think we should buy one of those cute outfits with the suspenders I saw over there. But then no more gendered clothing until the kids arrive," Piper asserted.

"Deal," Alex agreed as she threw the dresses into their cart.

After they left the baby section and picked up a pack of diapers and tub of formula that had a gift card promotion, the two headed to the register and then loaded their finds into the back of their black Honda Pilot. They got home and Piper went to their room to take a relaxing bath while Alex went next door to see if their neighbors' teenage sons could help her carry the tree and then set it up in their house for a few bucks. Of course, they did and offered to fully shovel their hastily plowed driveway.

Alex walked across the house, all the way down the hallway that emptied into the living room and found her wife had fallen asleep somewhere between flipping their quilt and flannel sheets over on one corner and actually getting into them. She chuckled as she gently tucked her wife in and then smoothed her fingers across her forehead and kissed her. She gazed tenderly at her wife's bump, wanting so badly to touch but she knew if the babies moved wrong it would either make her beloved wake up or feel extremely uncomfortable and she knew the amount of activity during their date had been a lot for Piper in her current condition, especially since she refused to use one of the electric power carts no matter how exhausted she got. And Alex couldn't say she blamed her, she couldn't see herself wanting to use one, even on her worst pain days.

She grabbed her book off her nightstand and made some cocoa. She dropped the mini marshmallows like tiny paratroopers jumping into enemy territory and watched them melt into the hot deep brown liquid, turning into swirls of white and small iceberg-like lumps on the surface. She then threw her favorite knit blanket that Piper sent her while the brunette was still in prison, the one that smelled like the blonde even on the day she was released and now smelled even more like her. She let the comforting warmth and intoxicating scent envelop her as her fingers gently tore through the pages of her book, feeling every groove as she searched for the page that she had left off on two nights before.

The sky had been dark for somewhere around an hour when a sleepy blonde waddled into the living room. Alex saw her wife and smiled warmly as she navigated the corners and furniture in her way as best that she could in her current state of pregnancy and sleepiness. Alex knew to leave Piper to it but she reached her arms out, offering the younger woman an embrace, that was if she could get to it. Alex kept an eagle eye on her wife, her heart pounding as she traversed the corner of the coffee table that she always banged into without making contact.

"Hi, beautiful. Did you have a good nap," Alex asked sweetly as she pulled Piper into her lap. She didn't care that right now her wife was heavier than her, she loved the feeling of Piper's body pressing on top of her own. It connected her to something so real and physical in those moments where she felt she could simply float away or cease to exist without consequence or care.

"Wha-wha time zit?"

"Aw, you're still a sleepy baby, aren't you? You are so adorable," Alex told her wife as she tried to wiggle off the brunette's lap, "Where do you think you're going?"

"Getting off before I squish you to death."

"You're not even close to that point."

"How much more can these kids grow? How can they keep growing? Most women when they have seven pounds of baby in their belly are imminently in the process of giving birth and I still have time to go. I want to carry these babies as long as the doctors will let me."

"Just remember you are lucky that you still have two babies in your belly, growing big and despite all the weight you've gained you don't have any signs of preeclampsia other than edema the doctors say is within the normal range for a-"

"Alex Pearl Chapman-Vause, don't you dare," Piper interrupted before her wife could say the deadly words, elderly primigravida carrying multiple fetuses, the horrible terms (well, to Piper, anyway) that the doctors and assorted medical personnel liked to refer to the blonde as due to her age and pregnancy status.

"We're getting away from the point, babe. You may not have asked for two and maybe you feel huge and you're bigger than you've ever been with growing left to do but you're having two. There are women in your multiples group close to your unadjusted due date spending their Christmas in the NICU or making the gut-wrenching decision to turn off life support for one of their twins with two weeks until Christmas. And here, you are—in the home you share with your lawfully wedded wife and two babies safely nestled in your belly."

"And making my life a living hell."

"Puh-leezze, need I remind you the shit we've been through? Carrying twins is a walk in the park and that's probably why you haven't been to the hospital once with labor pains from your above average for a singleton sized twins. You want some dinner and then we can do the tree," Alex asked as she rubbed the side of Piper's thigh.

"Are you on the menu," Piper asked seductively as she nibbled at her bottom lip with eyes that were a blue ocean of lust.

"Technically, I could be if you think you can handle just bending the rules without breaking them. And you have to eat real food first."

"Pizza?"

"We had that for lunch, you preggo nutcase. But if that's what you'll keep down then we can have it. I want you to eat most of all, you're having a couple of baby Sasquatches."

"Chicken stir-fry?"

"Now, that sounds good. Noodles or rice?"

"Always noodles, you freak who likes rice with everything."

"Some of us didn't grow up rich enough to eat pasta regularly. You get more from a bag of rice than a box of pasta," Alex asserted as she picked at the couch in an attempt to hide her vulnerability but Piper didn't need to see her wife's face to know she was in pain, she felt a pain deep in her chest, even during the decade they were apart she would still feel it sometimes. Piper pulled the brunette into her arms and held her as close to her body as she could. Alex smiled and chuckled when she felt their babies kicking and punching against her abs, as if they too were trying to comfort her. "I was worried these kids wouldn't recognize me, that I would have to teach them that I'm their mom too but they just know. I don't know how but they do. And that's the most amazing part about all of this."

"I don't understand it either but it amazes me too. We had better feed these children soon before they get antsy and I get pissy," Piper stated firmly before leaving a trail of kisses from her shoulder, up her neck and ending at her lips.

"You said it, not me," Alex teased, "And careful with that move, you know it makes me lose my senses every time."

"Yeah, I do. Let's get some dinner and get this tree decorated, then maybe if I still have energy and I'm still in a giving mood so appropriate to the season I'll go down on you."

"I will wait on you hand and foot and feed you like an ancient deity if that's what it takes to get fucked by the only chick who knows how to do it right."

"Mmmm…now you are definitely gonna be my dessert. Too bad you'll have to be a pillow queen bottom tonight and I'll have to play don't touch me stone big daddy top."

"The things you do when you get your woman all knocked up and you have such good stand-in swimmers you knock her up twice in one shot," Alex teased as she kissed the blonde and rubbed her back as their kisses veered into a steamier territory than they had been in weeks. They kissed like lost explorers who had finally found an oasis. Somehow, they eventually detached from each other and walked together hand-in-hand to their small kitchen. Alex found their current favorite Christmas playlist and started it playing on the Bluetooth speaker in their kitchen. Alex grabbed her wife a stool from their breakfast bar and once she had the oil heating in the pan, she grabbed her wife a few slices of apple, some carrot and pepper sticks with a spoonful of peanut butter and some dip she had made a couple of days ago. Piper looked at her wife with softness and gratitude as the brunette set the plate in front of her and the two shared air kisses across the kitchen. They chatted about little things, everything but babies and their business (as were their dinnertime rules), with Alex periodically asking the blonde if she wanted a particular vegetable or spice and how much of it that she desired. Alex made Piper some iced green tea with lemon, ginger, and honey and grabbed a cold beer from the fridge for herself, leaving it within Piper's reach for just long enough for her to take a sip if she wanted one before taking it away and keeping it as far from her reach as possible for the rest of their dinner.

Once their plates were empty and Piper swore she couldn't possibly cram another bite into her squished stomach, Alex gathered their plates and set the dishes in the sink while the blonde found the bags with their Christmas ornaments in the living room and began to organize them into groups on their coffee table while she relaxed on the couch, feeling her babies kicking like crazy. Piper was certain it was because they could hear their Momma humming Christmas songs while she cleaned up after dinner, they always seemed to be super active whenever Alex was singing within Piper's earshot. Eventually, Alex came out and smiled at her wife's work, barely hiding her laughter.

"How are my babies," Alex could tell Piper was wincing a bit.

"They're both lodged in weird positions and dancing."

"Maybe they want their mommies to dance with each other by the tree," Alex teased as she took her wife's hand and pulled her to her feet. She told their home assistant speaker to play a romantic Christmas songs playlist and the two danced in each other's arms in front of the tree until the babies in Piper's belly calmed down.

"Thanks for doing the lights, that's the worst part about decorating a tree."

"As much as I'd love to take all the credit, I had the boys do them. They were really sweet kids. I don't think either one of them knew middle-aged lesbians existed in the real world or at least they'd never met an out queer woman who wasn't a teenager or some shit. I think I'll have them do more handyman jobs from time to time. Their parents don't want them working a minimum wage fast food job but they couldn't say no to entrepreneurship and providing a service to those in need in their neighborhood. They mow lawns and maintain pools in the warm months, rake leaves and clean gutters in the fall and the winter shovel snow and help families decorate for the holidays."

"Well, they did a good job. I feel bad that I just came home and crashed."

"You're having our babies; you are allowed to crash whenever you need to. Let me take care of things, you just concentrate on keeping these babies inside you for a few more weeks. They're pretty cute, just like their Mommy," Alex briefly paused before adding, "but they could be cuter, they aren't quite at their Momma's level," Alex teased as she quickly kissed her wife's cheek and ran, knowing Piper was too weighed down to do anything more than a light jog. Eventually, Alex allowed herself to be caught and she rewarded her wife with a kiss.

"Since you're taller and can well fully stretch your back and core, you wanna put on the star?"

"Of course. Next year, you can do it."

"Yeah cause if we play our cards right, next year you'll be the one with the belly full of fetus."

"That really would be a miracle. Two babies toddling about and one in my belly, I think I know my Christmas wish."

"I think we have the same wish. How did you know about that?"

"One year I made a tree with pipe cleaners my favorite teacher gave me, she was the only one who went out of her way to help the underprivileged kids, without making them feel less than or embarrassing them, and my mom saw me drawing a star with yellow crayon and told me that when you see a Christmas star you are supposed to make a wish and if you keep Christmas in your heart then it'll come true."

"God, I miss her. As if I needed more proof that we live in an unjust world—Carol gets to walk the earth and reject her child because of her prejudices and disapproval, while Diane dies young and never gets to see her only child do good, see her become a wife and mother."

"Diane was always so fond of you. She would have loved the shit out of these babies. Maybe when they're born, Carol will become human and realize her only daughter just endured a difficult pregnancy in every way and is now the mother of two newborns at once when she's never really been fond of babies until she fell deeply in love."

"I still wouldn't say I'm fond of babies. But yet I wanted them and I love them so much. I love my babies, I just don't care very much for anyone else's," Piper asserted as the couple began hanging gold and red balls on the tree, making sure to get ornaments on all sides of the tree and that they were well-balanced space and color-wise. They kept dancing around as they spent the next hour decorating the tree, periodically standing back to admire the tree and shift ornaments or stealing kisses between the tree and coffee table until they stood back and Alex pulled Piper close before kissing her earlobe.

"I think it's perfect, Pipes," Alex gasped lovingly as she watched Piper's eyes wide like those of a child peering at the family Christmas tree for the first time and she knew the blonde agreed when she saw her wife's lust-filled eyes peer through hers as she asked in an unwavering, confident tone, "Do you still wanna?"

"Do you," Alex asked as she tried to find the words to express the things running through her brain and heart as she struggled to respond to her wife's sexual forwardness.

"Do I want my sexy pregnant wife to eat my pussy? Really, babe? When don't I," the blonde asked sarcastically as she tried to hold in her laughter.

"Fair enough, babe. How should we," Alex stammered as her vulnerability and fear mixed with her raw desire for her drop-dead gorgeous wife.

"Well, first you should take off your fucking pants, Vause before I rip them off you," Piper commanded forcefully with the sort of power that could sink a thousand ships and lead stalwart pirates to their deaths.

"Mmmm…you are so hot right now," Alex told her wife in a cool, husky tone as she instinctively began to pull off Piper's shirt and massage her wife's swollen belly as she planted kisses from end to end. Piper started to nibble at her lip, Alex could tell she was trying to fight her feelings, "Do you want me to stop, wifey?"

"No, no I don't. I want to make love, I miss you and I'm so horny. Then today you were so sweet all day and it only made me want you more."

"What about?"

"I think I know what's safe for my body, what I need, what my marriage needs. Take me to the bedroom. Just be careful."

"You can be on top. It's probably safer that way."

"Yeah. It's pretty much that or spooning."

"But I want to see those pretty blue eyes while we do it."

Two orgasms for each and a lot of outbursts of laughter as they fumbled through sex after nearly five months and with a heavily pregnant woman later the couple were laying in front of the fully decorated tree on the oversized chaise lounge of their sofa under a blanket with cocoa as they watched the lights twinkle and reflect their glow onto the colorful balls and the fire Alex built to keep them warm in their drafty house. Alex kissed Piper's head and breathed in the smell of her wife's hair as the blonde napped in her arms. She was beyond blessed to have someone so sweet and amazing as her wife, to carry her children. She stroked her wife's bump gently when she could tell the babies were becoming active again. For once, Alex was content to be alone with her thoughts because they were not of darkness and depression but brightness and hope.

She finally understood why Christmas was a time that reminded people of miracles and redemption instead of pure sacrifice. She had been redeemed this Christmas and finding Piper over and over again, the woman's persistence as she stood firm and fought for her when she felt her most worthless and these two babies that were resting as comfortably as possible (even after they had officially broken the rules and gone against medical advice) were her miracles. She knew Piper would shower her with gifts but this was all she needed in the world, Piper in her arms with her ring on her finger and their babies in her belly. Not that many Christmases ago she thought she had lost the blonde forever when she chose him but nothing today was the same as it had been then and Piper had never been more hers than she was this Christmas.


	3. What Christmas Means to Me

**Chapter Three: What Christmas Means to Me**

_I see your smiling face_

_Like I've never seen before_

_The little card you give me_

_Will touch my heart I'm sure_

_All these things and more, darling_

_Oh, that's what Christmas means to me _

The next morning, Alex rolled over and watched her wife sleeping, she looked down at her bump and could tell Thing 2, their up-all-night, early riser but sleep all-day child, was already up and practicing her gymnastics routine, which as they ran out of space had turned into more of a martial arts routine.

"Good morning, my sunshine child," Alex whispered as she rubbed Piper's bump. She had a special connection with this child, she was the only one who could ever get them to cooperate during the blonde's doctor appointments and really any other time anyone, including her own mother, wanted her to do anything. Alex knew parents weren't supposed to have favorites but she knew most if not all did anyway, Piper had been Diane's favorite (as she liked to remind her, even after she died there were still times she'd see something that was so uniquely Piper and turn her head to the sky and shake her fist) and Thing 2, was destined to be hers. Alex wanted to start her coffee and her wife's ginger tea but she knew she only had a few more mornings like this left before mornings turned into babies crying in stereo got the foreseeable future. Plus, Piper was always uber gorgeous but something about when she was sleeping made her more so, especially since she got pregnant.

Her skin had an extra glow and the fullness of her normally trim frame made her even more attractive in the older woman's eyes. Alex's hand slowly moved downwards and into her flannel pajama bottoms and rubbed her clit gently until she heard sleepy, contented, hoarse moans. So she added some soft, sweet kisses to the sweet spot just behind her ear, that luckily only she had ever found. She grinned contentedly as Piper smiled and her eyes slowly opened.

"Damn, it's just you," Piper groaned.

"Who were you hoping for? Cate Blanchett," Alex teased as Piper's bodily responses betrayed her attempt at seriousness.

"That's your thing. And I only want you to touch me and you know it, Mi-iii-sss-sss-suusss Vau-au-se. Cha-ap-mm-ann."

"You had better," Alex teased in a low, sultry tone as she grabbed her earlobe in her teeth, "what do you say we lose the pillow, babe? Maybe roll over so I can kiss those beautiful, sweet lips and see those pretty blue eyes."

"I'm past the point of being able to roll over, courtesy of the six pounds of baby plus all the stuff they need to survive in there in my belly."

"Well, at least lose the pillow?"

"Why, Mrs. Vause-Chapman, how ever will I support my aching back and hips?"

"Let me take care of that, Mrs. Vause-Chapman," Alex whispered as she pulled Piper's thermal top up a little and started rubbing her thumbs and the bottom of her palm into Piper's back.

"Mmmm…that's the only thing better than waking up to you rubbing my clit and kissing our secret spot. After you, I always acted like I hated that spot being kissed and it wasn't a total lie. That spot is only for you, nobody else makes love to my body like you."

"Will you still say that when you find out there's no tea and wake-up snack for you and the twins?"

"Not if your next question involves buying me a croissant and sticky bun from that place we like, you know the one that's almost as good as our favorite place in Paris."

"Always. Whatever the chick I slipped my dyke cock into balls deep without a rubber, got knocked up and then slipped a diamond ring onto her finger cause double oops wants," Alex teased as they both chuckled and the older woman pulled the pink pillow from where it was wrapped around her back and legs and threw it to the floor behind her, "Do you want a back rub?"

"I wanted a back rub seven months ago and look at me now," Piper teased with mock indignation.

"I'm supposed to not get hard when you moan blissfully? I'm only human and you are the hottest woman to ever exist. You're so special and I'm glad there's going to be at least two more of you in this godforsaken world that's gone to complete shit. And you told me not to pull out, that it felt so good. You just kept crying harder," Alex retorted as she played along with her role in their bedroom game, "But I take care of my baby mama, don't I?"

"The best. Can we get stuff to make Diane's cookies after breakfast," Piper asked as she let her wife pull her shirt over her head, helping as much as she could in her current heavily pregnant, still half-asleep state.

"Not unless she told her favorite daughter the recipe and didn't tell the daughter who gave her said daughter. If I had known I was going to end up on the married with children track I would have asked her so many questions I never thought I'd need the answers to. I am going to have these two little people who can keep her memory alive. Can you imagine," Alex asked as her voice began to shake before it trailed off.

"I think she had a part in all the little miracles that led to this quite literally huge miracle we've been blessed with. And I'm sure it's easy enough to find the recipe, especially with the internet. It was probably a recipe she found on a box. Probably some Betty-Crocker recipe. Or we could make our own recipes. But make sure to save them for our kids. Maybe we should make a scrapbook of our adventures, of who we were before them. The good, bad and ugly. Maybe they'll never want to know but I'd rather them have that option. I know we've gone back and forth on this but I don't want to hide anything from them. I mean sure when they are little and only tell them what they are developmentally ready for."

"Okay. Now stop talking you ridiculous supposedly intelligent human. You are lucky you have blue eyes and creamy skin with blonde-ish hair."

"Some women look forward to their first drink after giving birth, I'm looking forward to getting my hair done. Not that that will happen in the next five years."

"I married a dirty blonde and I like you that way. I don't care what shade of blonde you are. I'm more into redheads anyway."

"You are lucky I can't bend or I would slap you, Alex Pearl Vause-Chapman."

"At least I have a type. You are all over the map. I seriously can't make sense of your choices."

"You know you are totally into it. You like it when I keep you guessing. It's intriguing."

"I do," Alex whispered as she carefully gave her wife a deep massage with cocoa butter that just happened to be in about five places in their master suite and probably another ten throughout their small house. If they could find a place to buy it by the bucket they would have and bought those buckets by the gross. They stayed there for an hour until Alex helped her wife to the shower and then watched her under the guise of protecting her heavily pregnant wife but really she enjoyed it more than anything in the world, especially when Piper would start rubbing her belly, stomping and singing as she enjoyed the water falling on her sore body. Piper seemed so free when she was in the water and she could tell the babies were going to take after their mother in that way. Piper put on black maternity leggings and loose men's black and white flannel shirt with a grey maternity cami and long sleeve shirt while Alex took her shower. She walked into their room wearing nothing but a white fluffy towel.

"Hey, sexy," the blonde replied with lust-filled eyes.

"Hey sexy yourself," Alex teased as she walked past Piper on her way to their closet.

"I am not sexy. Winter pregnancy sucks. Why didn't I look at a calendar before I shot myself up with sperm? Could I really not have waited a couple of months to have an April baby? I'm stuck wearing men's clothes, leggings and one pair of jeans that still sorta fit because dresses are too chilly. And it doesn't help that I pretty soon I'll be so overloaded even that won't fit and then I won't be able to leave the house," Piper sulked as Alex pulled her into her arms as her moods swung wildly until she returned to something resembling equilibrium. Alex quickly threw on a grey cashmere sweater Piper bought her as an early Christmas gift and a pair of black skinny jeans with black boots and then helped her wife find a pair of shoes that both fit and wouldn't give her toes frostbite before the two headed out.

Three hours later they were in their kitchen attempting to turn organic flour, pasture raised organic eggs, raw sugar, organic grass-fed butter, fair trade vanilla and aluminum-free baking powder into sugar cookies. At one point starting a flour war that turned into giggles and Alex wrapping her arm beneath Piper's protruding belly and grinding her front against the blonde's front as she tried to concentrate on the black mixer Alex had bought her that morning as an early Christmas present. They loaded two trays of cookies into the oven and danced to Christmas jazz songs and classic fifties crooners in the kitchen instead of whipping up cream cheese icing for the cookies. They laughed as they each purposely made the other one mess up the decorations for their cookies.

"I can't wait to do this every year," Piper declared as she brought a tray of fresh cookies into the living room where Alex was reading a Christmas themed thriller.

"Mmmm…this is a page out of my fifties dreams, my barefoot, heavily pregnant wife in a floral housedress with a red apron waddling into the living room with a tray of freshly-baked cookies because making Christmas merry for her spouse matters more than her own comfort. You tried any of them?"

"Well, I can't risk poisoning the head of the household when I'm about to have not just one but two tiny mouths to feed."

"They come out okay?"

"Did a better job than me," Piper retorted and Alex rolled her eyes as she tried to hide her laugh at how bad her wife's sense of humor was.

"Look who thinks she's funny. You just stick to baking cookies and tiny people, let me handle the sarcastic humor, wifey."

"You are such a pig, Mrs. Vause-Chapman."

"And yet you married me."

"Cause you're my asshole. And I love your ass and your tits. The rest of you, can take it or leave it."

"Mmmm…I love your little Sapphic love poetry," Alex replied as she picked a pink Christmas tree-shaped cookie with tiny red and green balls sprinkled on top, "Tell me more sweet lezzie declarations of fucked up love. Please, babe."

"So do you think Diane would approve," Piper asked with a combination of worry and exuberance as she changed the subject and gave Alex the look of death that told her she was skirting the line of acceptable assholeness.

"She probably would have asked why you had to spend twenty bucks on organic, humanely raised everything but she would have approved. And she would have beamed with pride as she watched me give into whatever ridiculousness makes my beloved wife happy, especially since she's carrying some precious cargo. Speaking of the little devils, what do they think?"

"They want a batch of double chocolate chip cookies with marshmallow fluff," Piper stated as she nibbled at her lower lip and her eyes shined brighter than the sun reflecting off the bluest ocean.

"I'll go get the stuff. You watch one of those cheesy Christmas romances your inner straight girl loves," Alex teased.

"I do not have an inner straight girl! I just like soapy romances, it has nothing to do with what body parts I want or don't want in my vagina! And you watch them too," Piper argued while Alex glared at her, a pair of green orbs asking if the blonde was done yet.

"Not without you snuggling with me," Alex asserted as she pulled Piper against her body.

"Still," kiss, "counts," longer kiss.

"Okay," Alex responded with a more passionate and powerful kiss than Piper's chaste, sweet and short kisses. After a short make-out session, Alex grabbed her car keys and three hours later were nibbling at a rotisserie chicken and the crazy chocolate-marshmallow-walnut cookie idea the twins inspired their mommies to come up with that didn't taste too terrible. The two laughed as they ate their weird cookies and marveled at how perfect everything was before relaxing in front of a fire and talking about their favorite memories from the past and all the things they wanted to do with their kids. Skiing, Disney at Christmas, Santa, ice skating, snowmen, and building snow forts then starting a snowball war. Between the twinkling lights, a crackling fire, cocoa, cookies and kisses that needed no mistletoe, the two were caught up in the magic of Christmas and the miracle of children and being chosen for the huge task of motherhood. They weren't sure if they were ready or if they'd be any good at it but they knew they had all the things that were truly important, they had love, a warm home and could afford to spend an obscene amount of money on trees and cookies to make their happy home into a festive assault on all five senses. Alex smiled and rubbed Piper's bump as the blonde fell asleep on top of her and she knew her children's and by extension her Christmases would only get better from here, as her children lived a lifetime of holidays she never could have dreamed of as a child.


	4. The Mother

_You are not an accident where no one thought it _

_through_

_The world has stood against us, made us mean to_

_fight for you_

_And when we chose your name we knew that you'd _

_fight the power too_

Alex and Piper had decided to have a relaxing Christmas, the younger woman's parents, as expected, didn't extend an invitation to the couple to come and celebrate a Chapman family Christmas so the two stayed home and made homemade lasagna Christmas Eve and ordered a prime rib dinner for six to eight people with trimmings from the grocery store. They sent Nicky a Christmas card but got no response, ever since Alex had been accepted for early release through the new drug offenders program she had been angry at Alex, as many addicts were because it was truly designed to release the dealer and those involved in the higher levels of the drug trade while keeping the addicts in a cycle of imprisonment. Addicts typically either had disqualifying priors or their original drug-related sentences didn't meet the five-year minimum needed to be even allowed to receive an application. They knew eventually Nicky would remember she loved Alex and Piper, even if they did serve themselves and each other before all else. The three women had weathered so many storms together and the couple wasn't going to stop saying sorry and sending her money for her commissary. They had recently made progress, Nicky had called them a couple of times and told them she was happy that they were doing well. She told them about how unbelievable it was that the two of them were soon going to become mothers but that she believed in them and knew they would love the shit out of the kids.

They invited a lesbian couple they were friends with and were also estranged from their families. The couple also brought the homeless twenty-year-old queer teen they had been taking care of for six months in exchange for them attending a vocational education program. They were registered foster parents for special needs kids from birth to age four who had recently matched with a premature baby in the NICU but didn't have any kids physically in their care at the moment. The other couple bought them the fancy black and grey twin stroller with car seats and twin play yard they had mentioned that they wished they could afford along with a huge gift basket of eco-friendly baby products and a huge bag full of clothes and toys they had picked up on clearance or gotten donated from their friends. The couple hadn't wanted to accept charity but they knew their friends wanted to help. They had done diaper and formula drives, raffles and set up a GoFundMe for medical expenses for Piper or the twins that their insurance didn't cover, they had raised 175K so far and were hoping to raise at least another 75K before the twin's original due date if Piper's pregnancy had been with just one baby. The group spent hours talking and watching Christmas movies until everyone started to get tired, Alex offered for the family to spend the night and they agreed so she got them set up and then went to her room where Piper was already curled up under the blankets.

"You have a good Christmas, wifey," Alex asked as she got into bed and wrapped a protective yet loving and supportive arm under her bump for added support as she fought her wife's pregnancy pillow for cuddle dominance, a fight she surprisingly rarely won.

"Mostly. I've been having a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions today. I really want to keep these little ones in for another month. I'm not ready to give birth and they may think they are ready to survive on their own but they aren't. I want to ring in the New Year with babies in my belly. Is that too much to ask for," Piper sulked.

"I'd like to keep them in as long as possible, too. I'm in no hurry to watch you experience the most extreme pain known to man," Alex told her in a tone that was both loving and commanding as she pulled her in as tightly as possible as she ran her fingers through the younger woman's hair and kissed the side of her face down to her jaw.

"I don't know I think being burned alive would be more painful," Piper asserted, not even completely buying her own opinion.

"I'm not so sure about that but I guess you'll know soon. These little ones are healthy and measuring big. They are going to run out of room and get to a point where they are safer out than in sooner rather than later. I know I want to take two babies home at some point and not risk losing one or both because you were so determined to carry to term at the expense of all else. I know you didn't want twins but I also know you couldn't handle delivering a stillborn baby and I couldn't handle watching you do it. We have to think about what's best for them."

"I know all that. I just want the contractions to stop and I think Thing 1 has dropped and they both have stopped flipping and are head down. At least it's a little easier to breathe but it's hard to move. I couldn't enjoy our time with our friends."

The next afternoon, Piper, Alex, and her doctors decided it was time for the blonde to check into the hospital until delivery for close monitoring and hospital bed rest since moving was uncomfortable and Alex could no longer care for her on her own. She spent three weeks in the hospital before the doctors decided the babies were putting too much of a strain on Piper's body, especially her heart. After an NST, they came into her room with sullen expressions and said if she didn't deliver within the next forty-eight hours she would have a catastrophic heart attack or possibly a seizure and they had done more tests and found her kidneys were starting to fail from simply being overtaxed due to the combination of pregnancy, her IV drip, and medications they were giving to help keep her pregnant and comfortable. They agreed to give her a chance to deliver vaginally as long as she had constant cardiac monitoring and was never left unattended by medical personnel.

After a little convincing from Alex, Piper accepted the conditions that would give her a chance at the delivery she wanted. So, the nurses started a Pitocin drip and hooked her and the babies up to more wires than Alex could make sense of. After a few hours, Piper was three centimeters dilated and the doctor ordered her epidural and not long afterward, Piper's new favorite person came in, the candyman as she took to calling him. Now, heavily drugged, Piper was even more hilarious and ridiculous than normal. The doctor came in to check her and told her she was halfway there and offered to break the water around Thing 1, which they agreed to. Soon afterward, her contractions became stronger and she called a nurse to add more pain medication to her IV and moments later, she was feeling groggy so Alex told her to get some rest. The woman sat in the chair that after the long weeks camping out in her wife's hospital room had become as comfortable as her favorite chair in their office at home.

Around four in the afternoon a nurse came in and asked Alex if she would like them to bring her dinner. Normally Alex avoided institutional food at all costs and had been living on cheap takeout from the restaurants around the hospital during her wife's hospitalization, but today she couldn't imagine tearing herself from her wife for even a second so she let them bring her the roasted chicken with brown rice pasta and zucchini they were bringing all the other mothers on the floor who were permitted to eat a normal diet. Alex asked for some coffee and a strawberry jello (the one thing joyful about when she was hospitalized after the riot worried as much about her shoulder getting infected and arm falling off as she was about Piper alone wherever those bastards had taken her), which was promptly brought to her by a nurse who had the unfortunate task of waking a sleeping Piper to check her and the babies.

By one am the contractions were strong and coming without much of a rest period between them. Piper was uncomfortable and asking, no demanding to push. So the head nurse made a call and the teams on hand from OB, cardiology, pediatrics, and neonatology mobilized as the floor momentarily sprung into action to deliver a high-risk pregnancy. Piper was soon wheeled into the OR and Alex was handed a pair of scrubs, hair net, mask and covers for her shoes that she put on as quickly as possible so she could get to her wife. She got into the room and found the blonde's legs already wide open on the stirrups with two thin blue paper blankets laid across her upper body. A nurse brought over a stool and placed it at Piper's head for Alex to support her wife while staying out of the way. Over the next two hours, she told her how strong she was, how proud of her she was and how much she loved her. They shared quick little smooches when nobody was watching or when they were more concerned about what was going on between her wife's legs than whatever trouble the two women could get into.

"Your first baby is almost here, just give us one good push, Mrs. Vause-Chapman," the head of the delivery team told her as the team with green hats and scrubs readied themselves and their equipment for Thing 1's imminent arrival.

"I can't. I'm not ready to be a mother. I can't do this! I can't be responsible for another human being, I'm not a nurturer."

"Luckily, I am. And you aren't doing this alone. This is our next adventure, babe. This is what we wanted. Don't you want to know their sexes and to be able to choose a definite first name for them?"

"They're gonna both be boys, I know it and so do you."

"Well, you'll never really know until you push."

"It hurts like hell. It burns worse than actually being burned. Is it too late for them to cut me open and pull them out?"

Alex looked down for the first time and saw a head full of light chestnut brown hair between her wife's legs, "You have a little brown head crowning between your legs so I'm going with yeah, it is. It'll be over soon, wifey. And you'll get to hold our firstborn child. The moment we've been waiting months for and thought we'd never have."

Three strong pushes later, a loud wailing cry echoed through the room. Alex looked down at the source of the squalling and watched as their first child's body slid out of her wife's body, "Well, Al if you're gonna look at my vagina in its current state the least you can tell me is whether we just had a son or a daughter."

"We have a boy, a chunky little monkey of a son. We have a little boy, Pipes. And he is so cute."

The doctor placed the baby on Piper's chest for some quick skin to skin time as Piper counted fingers and toes while Alex tried to calm their son. Piper offered him her breast and he latched on for a few minutes before a nurse directed Alex about how to cut the cord then swaddled him in a blanket and the team readied to deliver the other twin. Fifteen minutes later a silent, noticeably smaller, bluish-colored baby made their appearance and was quickly cut from the blonde and handed to a resuscitation team.

"What's wrong with him? I knew something was wrong. Al, baby, can you, you check on him," Piper asked frantically as she tried to peek at their second-born child.

"Are you sure? I don't want to leave you."

"Our boys need you."

Alex walked over to the warming bed just as she heard a loud cry from a slightly ashen baby. She was so caught up in her joy that her second child's condition was improving, it took a moment for her to recognize the baby was naked and definitely not a little boy.

"You want to say hello to your daughter before we take her up to the NICU," the head nurse on Thing 2's team asked in an encouraging tone.

"I have a daughter, I can't believe I have a little girl. We were so certain they were both boys," Alex stated in a shocked tone as she looked down at the tiny girl with curly blonde hair and long brown lashes, who's skin was slowly starting to become closer to her own.

"Well, looks like you have one of each, what a blessing," she declared.

"Yeah, it is," Alex knew now was not the time to call out the nurse about her assumptions that they were done having children. Her only concern and the only fight she had in her was aimed at her daughter's delicate grip on life, "Is she going to be okay," she asked in a worried tone.

"She still needs a little help breathing and we're going to have her checked by a neonatal heart-lung specialist just to be safe. Your twins will be in the NICU, we'll put them together in a private room. Do they have names," the nurse asked in a comforting tone as if they were old friends, much different from her earlier faux pas.

Alex knew she should consult with Piper but she knew their top two names fit them perfectly, she still wasn't sure of their middle names but there would be time enough for that later, "The boy is Arrow, an homage to my mom and the importance of finding one's way to their destination and the girl is Axelle, A-x-e-l-l-e. After her Momma's first name and her Mommy's middle, a mashup of Alex and Elizabeth."

"That's really cute. Us NICU nurses love to make all the babies little personalized nametags on their isolettes, it makes it a cheerier place. When you're ready, come up and see us, just be careful around the ones with butterflies."

"Why? What are they for?"

"Now isn't the time to tell you. Later, when your kids are stable, if you're still wondering we'll tell you but it's not information you can handle right now. You'll know soon enough all about how things work in our unique corner of the hospital."

Over the next ten days, they watched as their babies were constantly poked and prodded, they had to be reminded to breathe much less eat while their babies spent two days under bili lamps after they developed jaundice. Then Lexi took a turn for the worse and developed a respiratory infection and had to have surgery on a collapsed lung and her bowel but she was a fighter like her mommies. Arrow Maverick Lucian Vause-Chapman came home first at twelve days old, followed by his little sister, Axelle Journey Soleil four days later. After weeks of colic and sleepless nights, they settled into a cozy routine with their chestnut-haired boy and tow-headed little girl and before they knew it they were putting them in their Easter best for their first time out of the house other than going to the doctor since their birth. Piper pushed the stroller through the park and watched older kids search for colored eggs, even though they ended up wearing them, Arrow strapped to Piper's chest and Lexi to Alex's while the couple stopped to look at vendor's creations and eat street fair food. Piper had her first post-baby margarita that wasn't made by her wife. They felt washed clean and ready to move forward together with just each other and their children. Everything was new and a kaleidoscope of colors that attracted the tiny eyes of two babies whose babble was rapidly becoming somewhat intelligible words. For once, all was right.


	5. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

**Epilogue: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas**

_Someday soon we all will be together_

_If the fates allow_

_Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow_

_So have yourself a merry little Christmas now_

Easter became Christmas in a blur of chasing after infant twins and a cross country move to five acres between Eugene, Oregon and the coast. They had a beautiful five-bedroom home with a log cabin feel, high ceilings and lots of windows that looked out onto rolling fields, pine trees and mountains. Piper worked four days a week as a paralegal while Alex ran their business and took care of the twins and the blonde did as much as she could. They each took a baby monitor to bed and put it on their nightstand and that was the baby they were responsible for overnight, Alex always chose Lexi. The two had a special bond, as Alex had predicted before their little fighter was born. She still had respiratory issues and had been in the hospital a month earlier for two days when she got her first cold and she started wheezing. Both twins were speech delayed but their pediatrician told them that this wasn't uncommon with twins who are so used to their twin speak that it often takes more effort to convince them to learn words that make sense to others. Their lives revolved around each other still and didn't yet have enough of a reason to leave the safety of their twin bond.

Alex awoke slowly just before the sun came up to a still quiet house. She laid there for a moment trying to decide if she felt any different from the day before, as she had done for the past four days since she had four of Piper's embryos, made with an anonymous donor who bore a strong physical resemblance to Alex transferred into her womb. They hadn't been sure about putting so many embryos in when they already were raising a set of twins but their doctors had strongly recommended placing that many due to their ages, telling them that was the recommended number of embryos for a woman over forty-two to up the chances of one sticking and Alex was petrified that she'd be in that extremely small percent where they all stick and they'd end up with six kids under two. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to feel and if her soreness was from the procedure, beginnings of PMS or pregnancy, December 23rd was the day she was supposed to test but she still wasn't sure she wanted to. She was catapulted out of her anxious thoughts by the giggles of her daughter waking up on the video monitor on her nightstand. She focused her sleepy eyes on the blurry image of her daughter as she grabbed for her glasses and watched for a moment as their daughter started trying to pull herself up on the crib bars.

Most kids woke up crying, but not their daughter. She loved mornings and slept through the night from weeks old. She woke up happy and only cried when she was hungry and if she hadn't been the spitting image of her mother, they would have questioned whether she was in fact theirs. As Lexi's squeals grew louder, Alex knew she had to get out of bed before their perpetually cheery daughter woke up their all-too-frequently grumpy son who was always full of big emotions and an upset tummy that mirrored his frustration.

Alex slid into her slippers and threw a black robe on, kissed her still sleeping wife's blonde head, covertly smelling her shampoo, before walking down the hall to their twins' Dr. Seuss themed nursery. She quickly checked Arrow's crib closer to the door and fixed his blue blanket and gave him his favorite stuffed animal from the top of his dresser, if he fell asleep and woke up with it he wouldn't know it had been missing overnight and he'd wake up happy. Then she went to the crib where Lexi was standing and waiting for her Momma to come and pick her up, even though the brunette wasn't technically supposed to be lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk but she had told the doctor that was "some bullshit and the most unnatural thing you could tell a mother." So she lifted her out of her crib once a day in the morning and once she put her down on her play mat after her bottle she didn't pick her up again.

"Hey, Lex, morning sunshine. How did you sleep," she cooed at the tiny blonde as she picked the babbling and squalling infant up and placed her on her hip as she patted her diaper, "What do you have for Momma this morning? Do you have a poopy diaper?"

"Ah-Ah. Ma-mamammaaa. Di-per dity!"

"Stinky little lady," she teased as she laid the baby down on the changing table and started unsnapping her jammies and throwing them into the hamper as she tickled and cooed at her softly to keep her entertained so she wouldn't notice she was cold as she changed the child's diaper and then put her in a fresh pair of fleece PJs, red with white snowflakes, then lifted her back up and carried her downstairs carefully. She made herself a quick cup of coffee in their Keurig, it wasn't a French press but motherhood with twins necessitated quick caffeine so that was what she went for.

"Let's see if your ridiculous Mommy remembered to make the day's bottles before she went to bed last night," which most of the time she didn't and Alex found herself mixing bottles half asleep with a hungry baby in one arm at six am. Luckily, today Alex looked into their fridge and found two rows of six bottles, one set with yellow caps and a set with pink so they could easily tell the difference between which of their babies got which bottle (because of course their twins needed two completely different types of formula, both of them being suited to the same foods would have just made their already overly complicated lives too simple) with a post-it note on the front pink capped bottle that said "I 3 You" in black Sharpie and found a banana lying beside the bottle. Alex smiled as she fell in love once more with her wife. Piper and Alex were forever doing tiny things like that for each other in this latest phase of their relationship and it was what had kept the spark alive as their lives revolved around their children.

"See this is why we keep Mommy. Well, that and she has this thing called company-sponsored medical, vision and dental insurance, which now that you have a mouth full of baby teeth it might be time to start using. I can't believe you ever were a tiny little four-pound baby on a ventilator. That I ever stayed up forty-eight hours watching a machine breathing for you, worried that I'd lose my little girl before I ever really got to know her. I've survived so much scary shit but that was the scariest thing I've ever been through. Even scarier than potentially being pregnant with quadruplets. I'm so glad you decided to stick around, you are the reason I survived all that scary shit, forgave your mother a million times even when I shouldn't have, so I could be your Momma. You are my everything. And you look more like your Mommy every day," she whispered to her daughter in between sporadically placed smooches and sniffs of soft baby hair.

"Mo-mo-mommm-mo," she squealed as Alex sat on the couch and cradled her daughter as she eased the silicone nipple into the little girl's mouth as her blue eyes gleamed and widened from excitement and chubby hands reached for the bottle. Once she was happily feeding herself, Alex grabbed her coffee and started drinking the warm light brown liquid while her daughter laid across her lap. She switched through the DVR, looking for shows she hadn't had time to watch yet as she enjoyed her special time alone in a quiet house with her daughter as the daybreak took hold. Before she knew it, the house would spring to life as it's two moodier members took over control of the house and the day became a rush of animals that needed to be fed and clients that needed to be tended to in between a constant cycle of feeding, playing and changing while they tried to keep two mobile toddlers who were crafty and had each other to bounce bad ideas off of all day long from killing themselves or each other. All while trying to squeeze in a shower, trip to the park and if they were feeling really gutsy, a trip into town to go to the store, a play place, coffee shop or even, gasp, an actual restaurant where they brought food to you. Despite how hectic their lives were, they loved their children and their little slice of heaven.

Alex and Nicky had even made up and decided not to let some silly jealousy end their friendship. Alex had done what she had to in order to survive and she told them looking at a newborn picture of the twins was what had motivated her to get through her final months of incarceration. Nicky was slated to be released any day now, she had told her that she had to spend six months in New York at a halfway house before she could be fully released but was then going to move to Oregon to be close to them, even if she thought rural life was the last thing she'd ever want. She was willing to give it a chance in exchange for helping the couple with their kids and other assorted animals.

Alex was counting down the days until she would be reunited with her best friend again, they tried to talk once a week and sent letters a few times a week but hadn't seen each other since the brunette left Litchfield. The two were in the final days of their feud when the Vause-Chapmans took off on their cross-country move just after Piper's birthday, they spent two weeks traveling across the country in their minivan, taking in tiny towns and kitschy tourist traps from the days before the country was ruled by the interstates. They took a meandering route that went from New York to Chicago before turning down towards Missouri, stopped in Santa Fe and Vegas before arriving in Los Angeles, where they stopped to spend an afternoon at Disneyland and show their kids the ocean for the first time before heading up the coast to San Francisco then turning inland to Sacramento before finally arriving in Eugene. Alex thought of how amazing it would be if Nicky were there to spend her first Christmas out of prison with their children who were enjoying their first Christmas outside of the womb, which really wasn't all that different, either way, you shared a way too tiny space with another human and were forced to piss, snack, entertain yourself and sleep in the same small area like it was a completely normal part of the human experience.

Alex was holding Lexi on her shoulder and rubbing her back to try to encourage the tiny girl to burp when she heard footsteps on the stairs and then saw her beautiful wife holding their son.

"Morning, baby. How are my favorite girls," Piper asked as she stopped in their family room for a quick kiss before heading into the kitchen to get Arrow's bottle and start breakfast.

"Good. Still a little sore and bloated. Lexi has been her usual chill self. How did we end up with such a laid back kid?"

"She low key gives us hell and you know it, she's just not as obvious about her mischief like her brother."

"Not my perfect little sweetness!"

"Yeah, your perfect baby girl."

"Is that true Lexi-Loo," Alex cooed as she bounced the baby in her arms until she was giggling and then gave her Momma kisses, "You want me to take Arrow?"

"Sure. I'll be right back with his bottle. You need anything," She asked as she placed their son next to Alex and he started crawling around on the L-shaped couch as Lexi grabbed at her new favorite toy, her Momma's black glasses.

"I'd like more coffee but I know that's not going to happen anytime soon."

"I know, baby. It'll be worth it, I promise," Piper told her wife with a reassuring kiss as she tousled her daughter's blonde ringlets.

"Do you have work today," Alex asked before Piper could get very far, knowing that the kids were in especially lively moods today and she was not feeling the greatest.

"Nope, took a couple of personal days before the firm closes for holiday vacation to get things ready and spend time with my wife and kids," Piper replied as she turned and winked at her wife with a smile that melted Alex every time, even after all these years.

"Did you hear that, Lex? We get extra Mommy snuggles for the next twelve days," their daughter squealed and clapped as both women looked on in admiration at how smart their little girl was.

Piper made oatmeal for the four of them and then started the cycle of work and playtime before lunch and nap time. It was a day like any other, except for choosing to get ahead on wrapping gifts in their living room while their kids were sleeping instead of trying to get some uninterrupted work done for their business.

"I still say we bought too much. Their birthdays are next month and some of these toys are for eighteen-month-olds," Alex asserted as she went through the colorful stack of toys and eyed the ride-on fire truck and toddler-sized soccer goal that were their presents from Santa because those were their son and daughter's obsessions, respectively.

"Baby, it's their first Christmas and we can afford to spoil them. If we bought them only toys for one-year-olds they'd play with them for a few months and you know our kids are advanced when it comes to figuring out toys."

"Yeah I guess," Alex answered as there was a knock on the door, "Are we expecting a delivery," she asked, knowing that their friends all knew when naptime was and would never come to their door during that time of day.

"No," Piper tried to seem genuine but Alex quickly became skeptical of her wife's truthfulness, "But I'll get it before whoever the fuck it is wakes our kids up and we're dealing with grumpy babies for the rest of the afternoon," she replied as she hopped up and ran to the entryway.

Alex craned her head to hear what was going on and heard a familiar voice intermixed with that of her wife.

"Hey, college," Nicky hollered loudly as Piper tried to motion her head towards the second floor loft-style landing to give her the impression that she had to keep her voice down.

"You're early," Piper declared as she threw her arms around the crazy-haired woman.

"Yeah, they had a spot open so I took it and then took a bus and a train across the country. You not happy to see me? Where's Vause," Nicky asked in a boisterous, rapid-fire fashion that normally both women loved about their friend but not when their babies were sleeping.

"I am. Nicky, you don't know how happy I am to see you after all these years! I've missed you so much and it really hurt Alex when you two were feuding. Just keep your voice down, the babies are napping and you don't want to see what happens if they are woken up too early. This place is hell with screaming, overtired babies," Piper asserted as she closed the door and led their friend inside the house.

"I still can't believe you and Vause made a pair of crotch monsters. How are you two moms?"

"How much detail do you want," Piper fired back sarcastically as she became visibly annoyed with Nicky's attempt at good-natured teasing.

"Well we both know Vause doesn't have a dick because we've both-"

"Nicky! Don't talk to my wife like that unless you want to piss us both off, you lucky asshole. Come here," Alex declared as she entered the foyer, "Does it matter? We're awesome moms. We love our children more than anything in the world. It doesn't matter how the hell we made them."

"Or the fact that you've been out for like sixteen months and you have eleven-month-olds? How does that work? What did the little wifey get impatient waiting and screw some dude without a rubber who never called again and you in your love-blind state forgave her?"

"We planned these kids together while I was still in prison. We knew it was a gamble but we wanted to have a family and Piper's fertility wasn't great so we didn't have a lot of time. We learned our lesson about cheating after everything went down before I got transferred to Ohio and Piper went chasing after me. We aren't playing games. Now can we finish being mad at each other already, Nicky? I've missed you so much, hug me, you asshole," the brunette told the crazy-haired one as tears began to fall from her eyes. The two women pulled each other close before Alex led her into their guest bedroom, where she would stay for the night before checking in with probation and having to go to her approved living situation with the couple's friend, Savannah. The two spent the next couple of weeks reminiscing and cuddling babies, Nicky got used to the new Alex and Piper as well as living in rural Oregon. They were glad to have the gang back together. The first morning after Nicky left to live with Piper's friend for her parole, Alex realized she still hadn't gotten her period nor did she feel it coming on despite her bloatedness and an upset stomach she had blamed on too much rich food and junk food over the Christmas holidays. It was hard not to want to get drunk with her best friend but she convinced her that she had decided to be completely sober for her wife and children.

She woke up at four am unable to get back to sleep but with an urge to pee, something that seemed to be happening more often lately, she figured she was just getting old. The embryos couldn't possibly have taken. Yet, three minutes later she was staring at two dark pink lines. There was no maybe about it. She was definitely pregnant and she knew by looking at the deep hue as early into her pregnancy as she was that it was more than one.

Shortly after the twins Mickey and Minnie polka dot themed first birthday party, she had her first ultrasound and the tech found two sacs, they were having a second set of twins. Alex's pregnancy was uncomplicated at first but at twenty-four weeks everything started going downhill. She developed gestational diabetes and was in and out of the hospital in labor. They gave her medicine and stitched up her cervix as the couple tried to get their twins to a stage where the doctors felt they would survive delivery.

At thirty weeks, they became the parents to two more little blonde-haired girls, one with deep green eyes that as she got older developed tiny blue flecks when she laughed and the other hazel-green with hints of gold, through an emergency c-section. Luckily, despite the rough final weeks of Alex's pregnancy they were both born healthy and screaming their heads off as they were pulled from Alex's womb. Their weights hovered around three pounds and they spent a month in the hospital mainly just to gain weight. Neither twin suffered the medical setbacks their older pair had experienced and got out of the NICU without having to be placed under lights, on machines or having surgeries. They even took to the breast with little prodding, something their older twins who became overly accustomed to pumped milk were never able to do. Alex found herself surprisingly enjoying the experience of looking down and seeing a baby's hand clinging to her chest as she grunted and whimpered as she took all the comfort and nourishment the brunette had to offer the children she had carried. Watching them feed made her feel less like she had failed at the most important task of her life. She realized these little girls were simply impatient like their Mommy. They were in a hurry to explore the world and have adventures but Alex still provided them the most vital sustenance and comfort. Alex would frequently catch her wife looking at her smiling with an expression that said "Told ya so" as she fed one or both of their second set of twins. Alex would smile warmly at her wife and motion to her for a kiss, which was always given as both women looked on in wonder at the crazy connection they had to each other made physical in the most amazing, unlikely way possible as the older woman fed the younger's biological child. They didn't need words in those moments, they focused on the energy floating around the room and the love wafting in the air like petals on a warm, slightly blustery day.

They named their new trio Payton Story Theia, her first middle name a reminder of the famous line between the couple, "think of the story that you'll have," and their first runner up middle name with their twins, Pilar Caelan Iris, her first middle name was the Scottish form of Nicholas and an homage to Nicky. They gave this pair P-names as a tribute to their Mommy and second nicknames that evoked light to link them to their older siblings. Their children's names were a reminder of the places Alex and Piper had been, people they had loved along the way, the renewed chance at life they had been given more times than any humans deserved and that their children were the light of their world.

Even if the Chapmans never came around and chose to meet their daughter-in-law or grandchildren, they would still be better than okay. Because they were free and they had love, not just happiness but true contentment and bliss but most of all full hands and a full house.

They knew a new adventure lay ahead for the now six of them as they snapped the last of their babies, little Caylee as they called their youngest of their three daughters, to go home into their stroller and even though it was August, covered the four and half pound baby in a thin white knitted blanket for her first trip into the outside world. The baby blinked as her eyes met the blazing late summer sun.

"Don't stare into the sun, goofy girl. Do I have to teach you everything," Alex asked in a voice that was somehow both commanding and playful as she tickled the girl's tummy and she started kicking and flailing her arms and Alex smiled as she flipped down the shade on the little girl's stroller as she reveled at the humid warmth hitting her skin as she walked to their three-row charcoal grey SUV. At that moment, Alex's life was full of purpose and for the first time, she felt the stirrings of brightness and optimism. Life was an adventure and this was one adventure she was glad to still be on.


End file.
